PolyProse

A burial greeted the rainy season. At the bottom of a valley, an apothecary stared down a grave. There lay his wife wrapped in linen with a plum pit in her hands. The attendants laid flowers before filling the hollow with soil. Shadows swallowed her, and the apothecary wiped his face as the Earth claimed her. Clouds amassed and thunder rolled across the valley, but the apothecary’s howls echoed down the mountainside.

The apothecary awoke with a fever. He formed a tincture from milled quartz and waters drawn at dawn. When his eyes were no longer swollen, he spotted a green sprout. It grew from his teardrops in the barren plot. On its lonely leaf was the face of his wife. He doubted his eyes, but with a second look, he was certain. He raced to his cabinet and pounded ancient herbs into the flakes of the tallest redwood. He applied the mixture to the stem before consecrating the dirt.

By nightfall, the sprout had become a seedling. The apothecary applied his potions. Over the coming days, the seedling swelled into a trunk. That single leaf had split into a thousand. Pink flowers blossomed before ripening into purple fruit, and his mourning ended. Inviting laughter spilled from his home. Joy found the valley, and the whole village relished in plums.

The rainy season continued without hunger, but the storms raged. On the darkest night, the sky filled with the brightest of lights. Thunder rocked the cliffs, and the winds screamed through the land. They scratched their image into boulders and fattened rivers. Gales tore through the basin, striking the apothecary’s tree. The thinnest branches snapped. The remaining fruits bounced down the parcels. The apothecary brewed remedies to still the storm. But the searing heat of a lightning strike hurled him back.

When the storm ended, he stepped out to his bruised tree. Its splintered bark littered the mud. Yet the askew trunk clung to life. The apothecary produced another elixir, this time with moss from the deepest cave and a fern trapped in stone. He rubbed it along the cracked wood. Horror gripped his throat upon discovering sun-scorched bark. In a panic, he retrieved a roll of linen and shrouded the tree limbs to spare them from the sun.

His mind spiraled at the dangers his tree faced. With storms so potent, he resorted to drastic measures. He drove nails through metal plates to protect the fibrous flesh. The tree bled with sap, and he wiped it clean. His shoulders dropped in relief. But then an ant crawled by his foot. Beneath the soil, even the tiniest creatures posed a threat. He drove a shovel into the turf. The roots fought against him. But after a day, they were exposed. He drenched them in crushed shale from a mountain’s heart.

At last, he deemed the tree safe. As he sat beside it, a gentle zephyr entered the valley. The wind flowed through the hills, dancing against the field flowers. It blew so meekly it could hardly carry a grain of pollen. The breeze leaned on his tree with the weight of sunlight. Then, like the thunder of his rainy season, the tree split.

The roots heaved away from the sparse soil. The branches smashed into shards. The apothecary screamed, but he could do nothing to stop the metal sheeting from slicing through the tree’s trunk. The great collapse boomed through the valley. When the hills fell silent, the apothecary choked in grief. Attached to the deepest and oldest root was a skull. Beneath it hung ribs ensnared by arms and legs bound in tubers. In its fingers rested the husk of a seed. The apothecary laid trembling hands on the bones.

“Yet again my cures have become poison. But where is the line between the two?” He asked before embracing what remained of his wife.