Green Apples

by Liam Hogan

The orchard was merely a hundred trees. A hundred and twenty, counting the malus sylvestris—crab apples—that fringed the sides. 

“Why so many?” I asked, shivering in the February cold. Old crones made hedgerow jelly from the stunted apples, despite the wince-inducing tartness, despite their size, more pips and core than flesh. Picked them under-ripe and sour for pectin. But these trees still wore their red and yellow, unplucked baubles like winter ornaments, all the starker for the lack of leaves. 

The farmer, a taciturn widower by the name of Wistler, took his time to respond. “You’re the one with the books.” 

This, a reply to the question I couldn’t ask. What’s the point of sending a trainee mage, someone who had spent five years devouring arcane knowledge, to apprentice for an apple farmer? 

His unspoken response: what’s the use in all that learning, if you can’t answer a simple question? 

Mages were sages. Learning—most importantly, learning when not to do magic—a vital part of our training, and why it took so many years. We had to learn, and then show we had learned, before we were taught any real magic. Only those who returned to the seminary for their seventh and eighth years were granted access to library’s deepest secrets. 

But the test, for I was certain this was the thing that would decide if I passed the apprenticeship, a test I had somehow set myself, wasn’t fair. I wasn’t a walking encyclopedia, hadn’t thought I needed to be. 

Bone-weary and unused to the work, hands ink-stained and callused in all the wrong places, February became March, then April, before I knew the answer. 

“Pollination,” I proudly announced. “Crab apples have more flowers, and for longer, than apple trees.” 

“That’s part of it,” Wistler agreed, watching the bees go about their business. 

Spring blossomed into summer, into June and July. My parchment-pale skin darkened to brown, and I began to worry I’d never see the seminary again. 

Not everyone did. Some, on arrival at thirteen, made it clear wealthy parents were using this as their education. The sixth-year apprenticeship would be the end of their studies. 

I had neither family nor sponsor to welcome me home. Which was why, presumably, I’d been farmed out to Wistler, a man with no magical aspirations at all. 

So I thought. We were in the storehouse, deep-cleaning an endless series of earthenware jars that seemed clean enough already, while I mused over a deeper question: why do we apprentice at all? 

The stated reason, to remind students that magic served the people, not the other way around, seemed thin. A whole year? And how worldly wise could anyone get, stuck in a one-man orchard in the middle of nowhere? 

“My wife was a mage, you know,” Wistler said, as we gulped the water I had fetched. 

No. How could I know? Wistler barely mentioned her, though there were clues, dotted about the cottage, signs that the old man hadn’t always lived alone. I expected him to say more, but, break over, we returned to scrubbing. Is that why I was there? Wistler owed a debt, some sort of obligation, to the mages? 

The mornings sharpened, the harvest arrived, and with it, a glimmer of hope. 

“The birds...” 

The birds didn’t get a chance to peck ripe apples. Wistler and I were out before dawn and in bed well after dusk, long days up and down narrow ladders, crates stacked, some for the town, some for the cider press. But the crab apples were fair game for blackbirds and starlings alike. Why encourage them? 

Because birds ate insects, and insects wormed through precious apples. This, I tentatively put to Wistler. 

“Another part of the story.” He nodded as I fumed inside. 

The year advanced. Though Wistler was nearing seventy, there was no task I could best him at. And I still hadn’t answered the questions I had set myself. 

The shortest day arrived, and a couple of weeks after, with the first full moon of the new year, the villagers for the traditional wassail. Carrying pots and pans, wooden spoons or ladles. All day, Wistler had me preparing the biggest pot, full of cider, spices, and the salvageable parts of every apple in the stores found blemished. Not many of those, as Wistler was scrupulous in only storing the best. 

More people, and far more girls, than I had seen in a year. And they saw me. There had been plenty of female mages at the seminary. While I had been increasingly interested in them, they had never seemed at all interested in me. 

Another clue? 

We were sent out as boys but expected to return as men. Girls, as women. Did this explain the gap in our training? We couldn’t emerge as something new in the close confines of the dorms, the classrooms, the dusty library? 

I expected Wistler to lead the festivities, but that was for the town’s mage, a woman in her forties. The replacement for Wistler’s wife? She led the villagers around and through the orchard, twisting and turning, splashing mulled cider on every tree. Ending up, not at the most productive, but before the hunched form of the oldest crab apple. Surrounding it, we banged our pots and pans, chanting and raising torches at the end of each verse. 

After, as the villagers, in good spirits despite the cold, began to scatter, a few wistful glances from freckle-faced lasses, the mage came over. 

“This the lad?” she asked, though who else could I be? 

“Elliot, ma’am.” I bowed and got a mere glance in reply. 

“Has he learned anything yet?” 

Wistler snorted. “He’s a little less green. But he’ll do.” 

It was the only compliment he paid, in the entire year. And I was happy to get it.