Three weeks after Moxie VII died, Eleanor finally crawled out of bed, tossed her used-up tissues in the fireplace, and went out to the garden.
Some of the fruit had ripened and split during her absence, leaving the gravel path streaked with drying slime. A black-and-white kitten, still wet and wobbly, mewled beneath the hydrangeas.
Eleanor ignored the kitten for now, as well as the puppy and half-dozen other animals that had been born over the past weeks. Their trees needed little help from her. The olives with iridescent beetles in their centers, the pomelos with kittens beneath their thick skins, the pomegranates that spilled ruby-encased fire ants — these produced a steady harvest on their own. All she did was find homes for the animals that needed human care (whatever one might say about the vices of modernity, online marketplaces, and no-contact shipping were true saviors).
But the great, gnarled tree at the center of her garden, with charcoal roots and sunshine leaves, did not yield its crop so easily. Most of its fruit — dark orange, lobulated, partially translucent — had remained in stasis for years. Eleanor circled the tree, dress trailing across dry soil until she found a branch that dipped low with its burden. Dark shadows moved under the fruit’s skin where mosaic sunlight struck its surface.
Yes, this one was almost ready. It was fortunate that it couldn’t ripen on its own; otherwise, Moxie VII would have torn down the garden in territorial rage at being forced to share.
For a moment, Eleanor stood quiet, thinking about Moxies I through VII and the curse of living longer than one’s pets.
How much love made sorrow worthwhile?
She shook her head, silver hair falling out of its bun. At her age, she had grown accustomed to farewells, to memorializing love, to cherishing companionship while it lasted.
She got to work.
***
The first day, Eleanor gave the black-and-white kitten a spot on the couch (it chose a cardboard box instead), the puppy a cushion by the fireplace, and both of them some milk —lactose free, of course; she’d ordered it online — along with some of Moxie VII’s leftovers. The puppy gnawed a thin bone it unearthed from the red meat.
The fruit’s branch groaned in the wind. Tomorrow, Eleanor would have to fortify it, lest it break before the fruit ripened.
***
The second day, Eleanor splinted the branch, then hammered together a platform to hold the fruit up. Its skin shone from how tightly it now stretched and quivered where limbs jostled around inside.
Eleanor sipped some black coffee (she’d run out of sugar) while putting up ads for the kitten and puppy. WARM HOME NEEDED. SEND PICTURES OF THE ENVIRONMENT. NO RETURNS.
***
The third day, Eleanor went down the path to wait for her monthly delivery, but as with the month before, the driveway was empty. She sighed, set down a box labeled LIVE ANIMAL, and double-checked the air holes before leaving the puppy to be picked up.
Back home, she cobbled together lunch from the meager supplies she had left, drank a watery cup of coffee, then tended to the fruit with a mix of fertilizer and rot-softened meat.
Her mother had always said you have to eat meat to grow meat.
***
The fourth day, the fruit entered a growth spurt and swelled to the size of a bathtub. Cracks spiderwebbed across it, leaking viscous pink liquid. The kitten lapped at the puddle before Eleanor could stop it. By evening, its eyes had become pure black, and it ignored its milk in favor of meat.
Eleanor took down the ad for the kitten.
***
The fifth day, a storm swept over the mountain, and Eleanor hurried to construct a tent around the fruit. She read to it — Moxie VII had always appreciated mysteries — with the kitten perched on her lap and purring so hard its newly-grown back spikes trembled. By the time the storm stopped, Eleanor was hoarse from raising her voice over the steady thump plop patter of the garden.
The cherries had yielded hummingbirds, too young to survive outside; she tucked them into a handkerchief. Other animals, dropped before their time, lay still within cracked, pulpy shells. Wiping away tears, Eleanor buried them between the roots of the black tree.
***
The sixth day, the kitten that was no longer a kitten shrieked in complaint at its breakfast. Moxie VII’s leftovers were running low. Eleanor gave the not-kitten the last of her sliced ham, then told it to hunt for bugs when it turned its nose up.
Stomach grumbling from hunger, she decided to rush things. She needed her supplies, and she needed Moxie VIII to get them to her. Ignoring the not-kitten’s fury, she dug up the soil around the black tree and buried the rest of Moxie VII’s leftovers there, though not before rescuing a gold wedding band from the jumble. She poured the rest of her milk in too; the watermelons would likely pop the next day, so more milk would come.
The fruit’s skin was almost translucent from how taut it’d become. Eleanor laid a palm against a closed eye. Past and future, grief and joy, twined like the blue-green veins on the back of her hand.
She had done this many times before and would do so many more times, until she was no longer the garden’s guardian.
The eye opened and blinked at her, soft and trusting.
***
The seventh day, the hummingbirds were testing their wings, and the newborn cows in the watermelon patch were lowing when the fruit split. Its skin pulled apart like grilled cheese, membranous and gleaming with dark red juice.
And out tumbled Moxie VIII, a black feathered-and-scaled mass of wings and claws and mouths and many-jointed limbs. She ate one of the calves but obeyed when Eleanor told her to share some with the not-kitten.
While Moxie VIII digested, Eleanor arranged for the remaining cows to be sent to a nearby farm; the farm promised her milk in return. Then she sat in her rocking chair and cradled Moxie VIII. Her bones protested the weight in a way they hadn’t decades ago, but this infant period was too precious to let go.
***
Moxie VIII grew as swiftly as the previous Moxies had.
By noon, she was racing around the garden, legs stirring a hurricane and dropping olive-beetles onto the paths. By night, she was soaring in the sky, conversing with the hawks in her many-throated voice. Moxie VIII was a good girl, though. She came in when bedtime rolled about to eat the rest of her cow, then folded herself by the fireplace to listen to a bedtime story. She didn’t even attempt to eat the baby hummingbirds.
The following morning, Moxie VIII went exploring, and Eleanor set about her day. She cleaned up the meat locker she’d neglected since Moxie VII’s death, collected the prettier beetles to put into terrariums, and fixed up a shed for the not-kitten since it no longer fit on the couch. As the sun went down, she sat in the garden and sipped a final cup of coffee, so watered down that there was no worry of the caffeine keeping her up.
Maybe, she contemplated, choosing a fruit fruit garden instead of an animalfruit garden would’ve made her less dependent on the village at the foot of her mountain. She couldn’t bear eating any animal grown under her watch.
Once the lackluster coffee had been drained, she went back in and found a trail of red stretching from the kitchen window into the pantry. Moxie VII looked up, a plaid-draped arm hanging out of one mouth and another mouth sucking on a femur. The not-kitten played with an ear.
Eleanor sighed and explained, as she had seven times before, that the pantry was for human food while the meat locker was for humans. Moxie VIII blinked three-quarters of her eyes and nodded. The arm flopped on a mangled elbow joint.
After cleaning up the blood — always best to tackle it while fresh — Eleanor went to bed. Hunger made it difficult, but she eventually did fall asleep because the sound of a van screeching away at top speed woke her.
At the bottom of the path sat two months’ worth of deliveries. Flour, sugar, coffee, fruit, ham, eggs, fish, and a few cuts of chicken that the not-kitten pounced on. The tissue was three-ply, and she’d even gotten a box of fruit tarts. Overall, it reeked of contrition.
Moxie VIII, licking blood from her mouths, nudged Eleanor to ask for praise, which Eleanor gave freely, along with a good scratch session behind Moxie VIII’s many ears and legs.
Sometimes, the humans needed to be reminded to pay their dues.
Eleanor treated herself and the not-kitten to a sumptuous dinner while Moxie VIII finished her catch from the day before.
As the stars came out, the witch of the mountain settled into bed, her monster curled up beside her. Her last thought before drifting off was how nice it was not to be alone.
