A. Tree's Arc

Chapter 3 of 6

A. Tree turned from the girl and saw them. Twenty people, maybe thirty. They lined the edge of the road behind her, watching him with eyes that asked the same question. He looked down at his basket. Eight apples left. Not enough. Not nearly enough. He stepped forward anyway and started handing them out. One to a man with hollow cheeks. One to a woman holding a baby. One to a boy who looked about ten. The basket emptied fast. He reached in for the last apple and saw five more people pushing closer, hands reaching. His chest tightened. This was the moment he had feared every autumn in the orchard — the moment someone went without because he hadn't brought enough. Then he felt it. A tickle in his shoulder, like something pushing through from inside. He looked down and saw a branch growing from his arm, thin and green. An apple swelled at its tip, red and perfect. He stared at it. Another branch sprouted from his other shoulder. Then one from his chest. Apples hung from all of them, big and ripe and ready. The crowd gasped, but A. Tree didn't wait. He pulled the fruit from his own limbs and kept handing them out, one after another, as fast as they grew. The basket sat empty on the wooden platform someone had dragged over for him to stand on. He didn't need it anymore. People lined up in front of him now, and he gave each one an apple grown fresh from his own body. No one would go hungry. No one would be missed. He had become exactly what they needed — a tree that could walk to where the apples were wanted most, and stay there as long as they were needed.