Raspberry's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Raspberry was the smallest one at the table, and tonight the table was empty. He stood on a wooden stool inside the little side room of a quiet yellow house. Three friends waited on him to fix that. He wanted a good life for all of them, a full pot and a warm room, even though they were only berries. But a raspberry has no hands for hammering and no back for hauling. He had no trade. That was the whole problem, and his friends were hungry. Blueberry sat by the dark window, his leafy sprout drooping. "My stomach hurts," he said. His round blue face crumpled, and his little teeth chattered. Blueberry cried easily, but tonight Raspberry could not blame him. Gooseberry knelt on the floor, sorting a pile of dropped acorns with her small green hands. Her leafy hair rustled as she worked. She never complained. That made it worse. "We will manage," she said softly, but the acorns would not fill three bellies. Then the door banged open. Blackberry stomped in, huge and dark, his glowing orange eyes lighting the room. Thorny branches poked from his shoulders. He dropped a heavy sack on the floor. "Nothing," he growled. "Nobody hires berries." He glared at Raspberry, as if the smallest one should have an answer. Raspberry looked at Blackberry's thorns. Then he looked at his own tiny red body, covered in soft round bumps. An idea pricked him. "Your thorns," he said. "They catch on everything. And Gooseberry, your skin is thin. You see light through it." Gooseberry blinked. "So?" Raspberry hopped down from the stool. "We are not one worker. We are one machine." He pointed to the sack. "Blackberry drags the loads no one else can lift. Gooseberry finds cracks and holes with her clear skin. Blueberry is soft and small, he squeezes into tight spots. And I climb. I am light enough to go where none of you fit." Blueberry stopped crying. "A crew," he whispered. They tried it that night. A neighbor's roof leaked. Blackberry hauled the ladder. Raspberry climbed to the highest shingle, too light to slip. Gooseberry held her body to a beam and spotted the rotten wood by the light passing through her. Blueberry wedged himself into the gap and plugged it. By dawn the roof held. The neighbor paid them in bread and coins. Raspberry split it four ways on the stool. For the first time the pot was full. His friends ate, and no one cried. But Blackberry counted the coins twice. "Word will spread," he said. His orange eyes did not look happy. "More jobs. Harder ones. And people around here don't just want roofs fixed." He leaned close. "They want folks brave enough to go up the ridge." Raspberry's smile faded. He had solved the hunger. Now the whole valley would come knocking, and the next job would not be a simple roof.