Each morning we meet in the orchard, moving our ladders to a new row. Bringing the fruit trees back to life. I don’t mind the work. It feels purposeful. And by the end of the week my hands have a roughness like I’ve never felt before. My skin has browned, and my eyes taper away from the midday sun. It hasn’t rained once all week, and the summer air feels light and buoyant and sweet.
On Saturday we collect all the sawn limbs and pile them at the north end of the orchard. And just after sunset we set them ablaze.
The sooty night sky sparks and shivers, the stars dulled by the inferno we’ve created on land.
“Tomorrow we’ll cut down the dead trees,” Bo says, arms crossed and staring into the fire.
“How?” I ask.
“We’ll saw them down to stumps then burn them out from the ground.”
“How long will that take?”
“A couple days.”
I feel like I’ve been suspended in time this last week, protected from a season that comes each year like a violent squall. In moments, I’ve even forgotten entirely about the world outside this little island. But I know it will find a way in. It always does.
*
It takes three days to trim the two dead apple trees and one pear tree down to only stumps. And by the end of the third day, my arms can barely move. They ache just lifting them through my T-shirt in the morning.
We walk through the orchard, examining our hard work—today we will torch the three tree stumps—when Bo stops beside the single oak tree at the center of the grove, the one with the heart cut into the trunk. It looks like a ghost tree, white moss dripping from the limbs, two hundred years of history hidden in its trunk. “Maybe we should burn this one down too,” he comments, surveying the limbs. “It’s pretty old and not that healthy. We could plant an apple tree in its place.”
I press my palm against the trunk, over the etched heart. “No. I want to leave it.”
He lifts a hand to block the sun.
“It feels wrong to cut it down,” I add. “This tree meant something to someone.” A gentle wind blows my ponytail across my shoulder.
“I doubt whoever carved that heart is still alive to care,” he points out.
“Maybe not, but I still want to keep it.”
He pats the trunk of the tree. “All right. It’s your orchard.”
Bo is careful and precise before he lights the three dead trees on fire, making sure we have several buckets of water and a shovel at each tree in case we need to dampen the flames. He strikes a match and instantly the first stump ignites. He does the same to the next two trees, and we watch the flames slowly work their way through the wood.
The sun fades, and the flames lick upward from the tall stumps like arms reaching for the stars.
I make two mugs of hot black tea with cardamom then carry them down to the orchard, and we stay up to watch the fires burn through the night. The air is smoky and sweet with apples that will never bloom because these trees have reached their end.
We sit on a stack of cut logs watching the fires burn for nearly an hour.
“I heard your mom used to read tea leaves,” Bo says, blowing on his tea to cool it.
“Where did you hear that?”
“In town, when I was looking for work and found the flyer. I had asked someone how to get to the island, and they thought I was looking to have my fortune read.”
“She doesn’t do it anymore, not since my dad left.” I lean forward and pull up a clump of brittle beach grass at my feet then roll it between my palms to crush it, feeling the broken fibers before I scatter the fragments back across the ground. I have a memory of my dad walking across the island, kneeling down occasionally to pull up a gathering of dandelions or clover or moss, then rubbing them between his worn hands. He liked the way the world felt. Loam and green. The earth giving up things we often ignored. I wipe the memory away with a quick closing of my eyes. It hurts to think of him. Pain skipping through my chest.
“Do you read tea leaves?” He asks with a quirk of an eyebrow.
“Not really.” A short laugh escapes my throat. “So don’t get your hopes up. I won’t be revealing your future any time soon.”
“But you can do it?”
“Used to. But I’m out of practice.”
He holds out his mug for me to take.
“You don’t fully believe in the Swan sisters, but you believe that fortunes can be seen in tea leaves?” I ask, not accepting his mug.
“I’m unpredictable.”
I smile and raise both eyebrows at him. “I can’t read the leaves with liquid still in the cup. You have to finish it and then the pattern of leaves left inside is where your fortune lives.”
He looks down into his mug like he might be able to read his own future. “Spoken like a true witch.”
I shake my head and smile. It’s hardly witchcraft. It doesn’t involve spells or potions or anything quite so intriguing. But I don’t correct him.
He takes a long drink of his tea and finishes it in one gulp, then extends it out to me.
I hesitate. I really don’t want to do this. But he’s looking at me with such anticipation that I take the cup and hold it between both palms. I tilt it to one side, then the other, examining the whirl of leaves around the edges. “Hmm,” I say, as if I were considering something important, then peek at him from the corner of my eye. He looks like he’s moved closer to the edge of the log, about to fall off if I don’t tell him immediately what I see. I lift my head and look at him fully. “Long life, true love, piles of gold,” I say, then set the mug on the log between us.
One of his eyebrows lifts. He glances at the mug then at me. I try to keep a straight face, but my lips start to tug upward. “Very astute reading,” he says, smiling back then laughing. “Perhaps you shouldn’t make a career of reading tea leaves,” he says. “But I do hope you’re right about my future on all accounts.”
“Oh, I’m right,” I say, still grinning. “The leaves don’t lie.”
He laughs again, and I take a sip of my own tea.
Sparks dance and writhe up into the sky. And I realize how at ease I am sitting here with Bo. How normal it feels. As if this were something we do each evening: set trees on fire and laugh together in the dark.
I don’t feel the gnawing at the base of my skull that usually plagues me each summer—a ticking clock counting down the days until the summer solstice and the end of the Swan season. Bo has distracted me from all the awful things lurking in this town, in the harbor, and in my mind.
“People used to say that the apples and pears that grew on the island had magical healing properties,” I tell him, tilting my head back to watch the waves of smoke spiral upward like mini tornados. “They thought they could heal ailments like a bee sting or hay fever or even a broken heart. They would sell for twice the normal price in town.”
“Did your family used to sell them?” he asks.
“No. This was long before my family lived here. But if the orchards could produce edible fruit again, maybe we could sell it.”
“By next summer, you should be able to harvest ten to twenty pounds from each tree. It’ll be a lot of work, so you’ll probably need to hire more help.”
He says “you,” like he won’t be around to see it.