The Old Man and the Fig Tree

An Old Man sits by a fig tree. White blossoms litter his body, and he is very quiet so that birds and bees land on him often. They drop seeds which sprout into plants that grow their roots around his body and through his beard. No one knows how long he’s been there, not even himself. All he knows is the tree—every leaf, every branch and where they flower, each piece of peeling bark, all its denizens and frequent visitors, and of course the few fruits he’s eaten from it. Life is not intense for him, but sometimes, when the rain falls a certain way, or the wind blows a leaf to dance a kind of pattern in the air he has not seen before, he is filled with a warm gratitude which motivates him to stay.

The other event, the harvesting of the fig that grants him his years, is almost so pivotal that it is more an occasion of sorrow than joy. Will this be the last thing I ever eat? Its cool skin, its juicy, fleshy inside, its curved shape that rolls around in his palm, its seeds—so many—each its own galaxy, the universe in front of him. It seems almost a shame to eat, and so sometimes he waits. Preferring to feel its skin on his, smell its sugars ripening—growing more sour by the second—and squeeze out hesitant juices, tasting new worlds. But once the flies descend, or the squirrels appear and he has to shoo them away, he cannot wait any longer. He eats the fig and lives his years out yet. 

Isa was eight when she met this old man. Everyday she would scamper off into the woods behind her house, feet bare heart open, out of the prison of math homework, sweeping, mopping, laundry, dishes, and general family life. She sang with the birds, collected fruits and nuts, and in the spring collected frogs. She had stick cages, dirt huts, wooden birdhouses filled with seeds, and a veritable city built for herself in the woods. It was on a summer day like any other when on what at first seemed to be a short bush she spotted a long gray beard. She lay down in the foliage to watch from a careful distance.

There a man sat. Dark skinned, motionless, covered in leaves and plants, big eyes open and forward. She watched him longer, circling outside to catch different angles. He had no hair on the top of his head, but his beard had grown down to his lap, nearly touching the two hands resting there. Out of it grew small red and yellow flowers, their roots intertwined with his own. 

Still she watched, and still he didn’t move! 

Maybe he was dead…she let out a small giggle then quickly covered her mouth and ducked low into a bush. He hadn’t seemed to notice her. Unless he really was dead.

She climbed up a tree that gave her a good view, bare feet pressing softly on the bark and branches giving way playfully to her weight. She looked intensely now. His eyes were definitely open, but they never…there! She saw a slight flit, a movement of the pupil—so he was alive! She made a sound like a woodpecker, tongue clicking rapidly against the roof of her mouth. He didn’t turn. She whistled like a canary, her hands clasped like she was holding a baby bird, and blowing into the cavity between her thumbs. Still he didn’t budge. Then she tried her favorite—from the bottom of her throat she burped up pockets of air, and from down there it must’ve sounded like a bullfrog was up in the tree! That would get his attention. But it didn’t.

Still he sat, silent, eyes only moving with the wind as if his gaze was blown like the leaves in his hair. 

Then she decided to be bold. She climbed down carefully, still soft and quiet as she always was in the forest, but with less care if she was heard. She walked over and stopped ten full adult steps away. 

“Hello, I’m Isa,” she announced.

His head turned like a cow, slow and muscular, “Hello Isa.”

Encouraged, she moved closer. Standing upright she was the same height as he sat. 

“What are you doing?”

“Sitting. Looking at the tree. Would you like to join me?”

“No, it looks boring.”

His voice was low and raspy like a dog scratching at a door, “Yes, I suppose it is.”

She stuck her tongue out and moved a little closer, standing right in front of him and blocking the view of the tree.

“You have beautiful eyes, Isa, they remind me of the willows in Russia, have you ever been?”

“My mom tells me that too. She says ‘Isa you have the prettiest eyes in the world my little zucchini!’” And she stuck her tongue back out.

“You have a wonderful mother then.”

“I don’t have any friends. I had one, but he screamed when I gave him a snake. He’s stupid.”

“Would you like to be friends?”

She sat down, humming thoughtfully. 

“Well, do you like snakes?”

“Yes, they’re lovely creatures.”

“What about frogs?”

“Oh yes, frogs are my favorite. I can hear them in the stream at night.”

At this she jumped up and ran off. She came back thirty minutes later, hands cupped like when she sang the birdsong, a little more mud in her hair and panting.

“Look, I got a good one!”

“I can hear it, Isa.” He chuckled softly, and some twigs fell off his head. 

She squatted down in front of him and outstretched her hands.

“Come on, give me your hands, hold it good or it’ll get away. He’s a jumpy one.”

She giggled and prodded him with a few more “come on come on” until he relented.

“Forgive me, I haven’t used my arms in a couple of years.”

He unfolded his arms, picking his right hand off his left from his lap, and held them out under Isa’s hands. His hands were only slightly larger than hers, crisscrossed with veins and spindly like branches. 

She looked at him sternly now, “Okay, when I open my hands, you gotta grab him, okay? Don’t be scared. Oh, and don’t squeeze him too hard. They don’t like it. And don’t put it in your mouth either, they don’t taste very good. Also my mom told me not to.”

“Yes, yes, I know.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

Isa’s mom was a loud lady. She was also super smart, always busy with something, and never-ever relaxed. While cooking—the thing she’d always say relaxed her but that no one really believed—she’d yell at her husband Richard how he was cutting the vegetables wrong again (he always forgot which direction to cut the onions along) and complain about her clients (she was a wedding organizer). The year that Isa had first met the Old Man was the same year of the pandemic—her mom transitioned into freelancing and became twice as busy while her dad transitioned into sitting on the couch watching Fox News everyday. They hadn’t really told her that something was happening—they didn’t know themselves—so when the first impression of “no school go play in the woods” turned into her dad drunk and waking her up at two in the morning to warn her about Mexican boys at school while her mom locked herself inside of the home office for fifteen hours everyday working, Isa was suddenly living in two worlds and the one where everyone told her she belonged terrified her immensely while the one no one knew about was sometimes forbidden to her for no discernable reason at all. 

“Isa!! Don’t think I can’t hear you. Show me your math, come on, you know the drill.”

“But mom….” Isa’s bare foot had just landed on the concrete step outside, and she could feel the warmth of the sun and scratchy stone, while her other foot was cold in the soft red of the carpet. She thought she had been quiet this time—her mom had installed a bell on the screen door that Isa had figured out how to circumvent by lifting the door up a little as she slowly opened it—but her mom seemed to know everything no matter what. 

“Come on, you know better.”

“But the turtles, mom, today’s—”

“Isa!!!”

Their conversation was held through the door directly on the little girl’s left where her mom sat working.

“But I don’t know how to do it. And it’s stupid!”

“Ask your dad for help, Isa, we’ve been over this—”

“But he doesn’t know how to do it either!” 

“He just plays dumb. He’ll figure it out. Go. You can leave after you two finish. Okay?”

Isa stuck her tongue out at the dark wood door, its little metal knocker seeming to smile back in victory—her mom insisted they always knock before disturbing her—denying Isa entrance. Not that she wanted to go in anyway. She dragged the bottom of her eyelids down and made grumpy faces at it. 

“Isa!!!”

She jumped up and scurried away as her mom listened for the pad of bare feet on the wood floors. 

“Dad! Mom says you have to help me with my homework!”

A groan came from the living room over the din of the TV, “But the trial! Lizzie, it’s today and—” 

“Richard!!!”

Isa giggled, and ran over to grab her papers from the backpack lying by the shoe rack near the door, and then over to her dad on the couch. It comforted her that he didn’t like doing math either; he was an accomplice, almost a friend. 

Whenever she saw her dad Isa couldn’t help but notice his eyes. Typically they squinted, the dark brown pupils squeezing into black as if nothing he ever looked at made sense to him. But when he looked at Isa they were open wide and she saw the pupils—rusty brown with sun spots of gold—and the shape of the eye with that eternal consternation sloped down into melancholy. Whenever she saw this she had the urge to hug him. 

“Ciao papà!”

She pressed her head into his chest, wrapped her arms around him, and he gently rested his hand on the top of her head. 

“Hello my little darling, come come, show me what we have to do. Let’s be done with it soon, yeah?”

“Okay.”

He basically did the whole thing for her—it was a 10x10 multiplication table. She was still only in third grade, and Richard could do it easily. He liked to pretend he didn’t know how because sometimes it made her giggle, and maybe even led her to secretly believe that she was smarter than she thought. In twenty minutes she was out the door getting her feet so dirty he’d have to scrub them in the shower with a pumice stone when she got back. 

She didn’t see the Old Man again for four years. It was not because Isa didn’t want to return—she had never tried the fruit that he had described to her that day and thought it sounded yummy—but she couldn’t seem to find it again. The forest was hers. She knew it’s trees, its boulders, its hills, the path of the stream and now how it shifted—grew and waned—with the seasons and their rains, even knew the little mounds where the turtles hid their eggs and the nests of the bids—her favorite was a handsome blue bird with a stiff tail that swung like a pendulum when it rested—and yet she could never quite remember how she had found her way to where the weird old man sat that day.

Her parents had gotten meaner since then. Usually when she heard them yelling at night she would crawl out through her bedroom window and sleep somewhere by the chattering stream instead. But recently they had brought her in to talk—why? What did she have to do with her mom losing another client or her dad crashing the car? Yet she was their only child, so it was all her responsibility to do well in school now. Her dad had started giving her books on philosophy and psychology and business he said were ‘very important to read,’ and her mom mentioned that Isa would have to start working soon to save money for school. Isa never argued with them, just listened patiently, nodding her head, until she could escape again to her friends.

When I say friends, I don’t mean school friends. At first she simply ignored the other girls and thought about how her frogs or how her favorite fruit trees were doing. She drew in class, played in the grass, and sometimes tag or four-square or off-the-wall with the boys at recess, but when she saw a boy step on and torture a snake she had found and all the girls gather around to scream and giggle, she began to loathe them. She began to hate the little things they did: how they raised their hands in class up high and twiddled their fingers, how they laughed when someone said something that wasn’t funny, the way they’d huddle together at lunchtime, and worst of all she hated their new phones and the way they posed for pictures or laughed at each other from across the room with their heads down. 

Some of the boys were okay when they were playing. One in particular, Brian, had once asked her why she took off her shoes at recess. She told him it was because she liked it, and wiggled her toes at him, and he responded by taking his own shoes off. Although she saw him wearing them the next week. 

Most of the trees were bare save for some multicolored stragglers. The path was crunchy and the soil underneath wet and lush with some mushrooms from late fall rains, each footstep releasing a sweet waft of decomposing leaves. A breeze was blowing, intermittent but harsh—that dry November wind reminding you that winter was coming. But Isa noticed none of this. Only her heart, pained and shaking, and her eyes, salty and blinded. 

She decided then that she was done with humans. She would run away and live in the forest, or run away to the lake, or maybe even to Canada—she didn’t know where she’d go—but she’d go away. Away from people. Away from their rules, their sweets that didn’t taste as good as fruits anyway, their clean houses, their numbers, their words, all of it, all of it, all of it, gone, done, away, stupid, stupid, stupid!

“Hello Isa! I was wondering when you’d be back.”

She stopped walking. Five feet in front of her sat a mound of leaves with two eyes poking out. A man? Wait, her name, Isa, who… 

Since the day that the two of them had met four years ago, Isa had come to believe that the weirdo and the fig tree were not real. It was a dream that she was remembering. Or maybe she had a psychotic break. Ate the wrong kind of mushroom. Whatever it was, it hadn’t been real. It was her life that was real. The bitches at school were real, her parents yelling at each other was real, her loneliness—that. That was real. 

She continued to be silent. Maybe he would go away. The leaves would fall to reveal the space he didn’t really occupy. She sniffled. A frog croaked in the distance. Then another. They began to sing a chorus of basses that joined the cicadas shrill. Soon the nights would be quiet, but there was noise now; it was not winter yet. She sat down, not wanting to say anything to give credence to this vision, and looked at the tree. 

It looked old, very old, its trunk low and wide with dozens of thick branches sprouting out the base. It felt immortal, somehow. All of its leaves were green and there were even a few white blossoms poking out of the brush, and on one she saw a bee. There was a kind of halo that surrounded it: the grass and insects crawling around weren’t what she saw around other trees, and even the light that landed near felt different somehow, but she didn’t know why. She watched a sparrow land on a branch near the middle and look around. He had an orange underbelly that stuck out like her dads, and its tiny beak looked like a needle from where she sat. It turned its head in her direction, two round black pupils shined in the moon and the beak became a black painted dot. The bird flew away without making a sound. A bee bobbed in the air looking for somewhere sweet to land. A squirrel started making a break for the tree from a nearby bush, then paused halfway when it noticed Isa. It stood up on its hind legs looking for other intruders and buying time, its hands clutched at its chest. She saw another squirrel dart between bushes over on the other side from where she sat. Then squirrel one ran for the tree, running up it like it was flat ground and shooting for a branch. It was hidden behind leaves for a second but she could see the general area rustle. It jumped over to a branch on a nearby pine tree and found a spot to settle in it near the top. Squirrel two ran up to join it. The wind blew harsh enough to toss Isa’s hair in her eyes and make her shiver under her dad’s old scarlet sweatshirt with big college letters on the front and gray shorts. She thought about her pajamas, fuzzy and dark blue with witches and frogs and brooms on them. She looked to her left, where the Old Man sat, motionless as always. 

She heard the tree say something to her then. They weren’t words. It wasn’t a sound that it made, but nonetheless, it was speaking to her—she knew that—but she couldn’t hear from where she sat. She stood up, her eyes steady in front. Her feet crunched leaves, and then felt warm and dry and tickled by ants. She reached out to touch the bark.

A rustle and the scent of pollen came from her right.

“Ahhh, lucky you girl,” the Old Man said, “she likes you! Don’t look away now. Watch closely.”

She could see, among the two dozen or so blossoms, one that shook slightly on its own—each petal vibrated ever so lightly and the stamen inside shook out puffs of pollen that dusted the air. Then six bees all at once came and crowded it, pushing each other out of the way and buzzing. They crowded the tiny flower until they all found a place to settle. Seconds passed. The air grew more still. Then they began to expand? Were they leaving or, no, something inside was pushing them out, growing rapidly now as white petals drew back and folded in on themselves like they were giving birth. The bees buzzed louder and more excitedly, and more drew near: 8, 10, now 15, dancing and jumping around. Some made little circles in the air, some bobbed straight up and down, others floated still as a star, waiting, watching, just like the Old Man.

Yet as the fruit—the fig! she remembered now—grew, only more bees came and surrounded it so that it began to look like a fuzzy corn balloon. Isa tilted her head to the side and stared. What were they doing?

“They look kinda hungry, like…”

“Yes, they are, and they’re greedy little things too. Shoo them away for me please, would you?”

“What?” Isa was still staring ahead at the tree, watching the bees hover around and dance.

“Well you’d like to try some of the fruit, wouldn’t you? You’re very lucky you know. It’d be a shame not to eat some. I promise you’ve never had anything like it.”

Her mouth watered. She had skipped dinner. But still she didn’t move. 

“What does it…what does it taste like? I’ve had a lot of fruits, you know, I’ve even been to Canada! And they have these exotic apples. I bet it's like that. Like a stupid apple. Not even sweet. Or just bad. No. I don’t want it!”

She crossed her arms and huffed. Why did she say that? Of course she wanted some! Maybe he was lying to her, wouldn’t actually give her any, or it wasn’t actually a fig or even a fruit. Who was this weirdo anyways? She turned around to go—then shrieked at what she saw. 

Round beady eyes with no iris crinkled at her—as if they were stuck in a smile—inches from her own eyes, while the rest of the face was caked in an inch of dirt with leaves hanging everywhere. Yet even then the deep creases in his face—she could have hidden snakes in the folds—showed clearly like furrowed land, and…he didn’t have any eyebrows or pupils. He chuckled, and she was reminded of the time she heard a small tree topple over in a storm.

“Never seen an old man before?”

“You can move! And, and, your eyes!”

“Of course I can move, dummy.”

He moved past her and lightly tapped the back of her head. She realized it was weird that they were the same height. She was only twelve, maybe four and a half feet tall, and he was a grown man—an old slouching one sure—but grown.

“How else am I supposed to eat these figs,” he continued, “you thought the bees brought it to me like some fairies? They wouldn’t share a drop of juice if I didn’t get up and shoo them off. Oh you’ll see.”

His feet didn’t make a sound, and when they moved it was almost like she was watching a train roll over tracks more than feet picking up and walking. They swam through the earth. 

Then she heard a dog bark, a chihuahua, to be specific, that famous soprano. What was a chihuahua doing this deep in the woods at night? She looked up. Oh, it was the weirdo, barking like a dog at the bees. He was really going for it too, the veins on his neck strained and his arms shot behind him like his body was recoiling from the shock of the barking. A couple bees on the edge scattered, but he kept going, louder, rhythmic, bringing his face closer and closer to the bees. She covered her ears, confused and tired. Then he coughed, ending the barrage. He looked at her,

“Sorry, they only speak Chihuahua. Don’t ask me why.”

He kept going. She decided to laugh and join him this time, squeaking like that one dog who’d stick its head out the car window when someone’s parents came to pick them up after school.

“No, no! You’re telling them hello! How excited you are to see them! You have to tell them ‘SHOO,’ ‘GIT,’ ‘FUERA,’ you’re hungry Isa, you’re starving. You haven’t eaten in ten years and these bees are eating your only meal. Come on now!”

She thought of her parents. The way her dad said no with his bottom lip sticking out like he wanted to cry. The way her mom said no high and glassy like she was saying it to a stray dog, eyes somewhere far away, terrified of something that was here. She saw Stacy’s cruel eyes and screeching laughter. She was in her room now. She had called her mom a bitch, and been slapped. She had tried hugging Isa after that. Then she was at school. The teacher was taking her notebook. Stacy looked proud, regal, almost, with her blonde curls and high forehead. Then walking home, alone, again, Brian with his friends, her with nothing. Now she was back at home, the light of the full moon calling to her through her open window, bidding her to run, to go, to live, to—

Tiny hands shook her shoulders. She opened her eyes—had her eyes been closed?

“Where did all the bees go?”

“You crazy little kid you got em good! A few of them even stung you on the way out but you kept going! Alright. Nice work. Are you ready to eat?”

She nodded, and gave a goofy smile, “thanks mister! You’re not gonna hit me now are you?”

“What? Oh. Don’t worry. It’s safe here. The tree protects. Come come, look at this.”

He brought a single wrinkly finger up to the fig to collect a drop of the purple syrup that oozed from the dozens of small holes that the bees had poked. The skin of the fig was dark like leather. He brought his finger to his mouth, smelled the syrup, closed his eyes, and licked it. Now he made sounds like a cat purring. 

“Go on. Try it.” He told her, his eyes still closed.

Isa was scared to try it, but she knew there was no other option. She could smell its syrup already from where she stood—like honey, like oranges, like chocolate, like a cool summer night after a rain, like a warm pond, and like the sweat on Brian's neck when she ran into him playing tag. She reached out her own finger now, picking up a thin sliver of juice, and before it could drip off she plopped her whole finger in her mouth and licked it clean. 

“Mmmm, mmm! This is a fig?”

“Well, a magic fig, honestly,” he told her, “You won’t find anything that tastes like this in your grocery stores. You like it?” She nodded. “Good, good. It likes you too, you know. How do you feel? It’s a powerful thing.”

“I feel like crying. I don’t want to go home.”

“Well then cry, don’t mind me.”

So she cried.

When Isa finished crying, she felt better, and hungry. She looked around for the Old Man and saw him sitting in his usual spot, cradling the fig in his lap, staring at the tree like nothing had happened. 

She spoke up, “I’m hungry, I have to go. But I don’t want to go. What should I do?”

“Why are you asking me?”

She paused, noticing how light her body felt. Then she ran over to crouch by the Old Man, barked at the bees that had started to gather, and looked down at his wrinkly hands.

“Did you say that fig was magic? You did! Is it really magic? Brian says he doesn’t believe in magic, but I knew he was stupid! He always tells me I’m stupid and starts talking about computers and stuff. But I knew it was real!”

She started to giggle, but then grew serious.

“I ate some! Am I gonna be all stretchy like rubber now? Or maybe I can see the future now, or, or—”

Her eyes grew wide with mock fright and she sprang up and pointed at the sitting figure:

“I’m gonna be like you! Was it cursed! You needed a replacement or something! Now I am tied to the tree forever! Noooooo!”

She stared at her hands, then carefully felt her face, “Wrinkles! And I can feel a beard growing already!”

He chuckled, “sit, Isa, sit.”

“Yes, of course. You must teach me your ways, goblin!”

“I’m not a goblin.”

“You look like a goblin.”

“Well, I’m not.”

“Are you cursed?”

“No.”

“Then why—”

“Sit Isa, please. Sit. I will—”

“Why? I don’t like sitting?”

“Why not?”

“It’s boring. I sit at school all day. I like running around!”

“This is a different kind of sitting than you do at school.”

“Do you like it?”

“I love it.”

“Can I try?”

“Yes, please. Come, next to me—and face the tree, not me.”

“Is this a trap?”

“No, I choose to be here. I told you, I love sitting.”

“Hmmmm…”

“It will solve all your problems, you know, the sitting is the real magic.”

“So the figs not actually magic?”

“No, it is—”

“But you said—”

“The sitting isn’t actually magic,”

“Then why—”

“It’s like magic. Sitting is so powerful and meaningful to me that I compare it to magic to make a point. It’s an exaggeration, yes, but it really does feel like magic. It’s that wonderful. It’s like a new world. You see?”

“No. So it’s not real magic?”

“No. But it’s like real magic.”

“And the fig is real magic?”

“Yes.”

“Can I eat the fig now?”

“Sit first.”

“But—”

“Sit Isa. I promise you we’ll eat the fig after.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

Isa awoke the next morning late, the sun already a quarter into the sky and the birds singing their full romp. A blossom had fallen on her nose, and noticing it, she sneezed and it floated away. She suddenly knew that she was alone, and would be for a very long time, longer than her young mind could make sense of. She jolted upright, for a moment terrified, but then she noticed her friend lying down by her side, curled up in a ball with his head resting near her feet. She started to remember what he had told her about the fig. 

But that could wait a little longer. 

“Good morning Rutabaga,” she touched the big toe on her left foot and gave it a pat with her pointer finger like she would have a kitten. 

“Good morning Sanji,” then the next toe on her left foot, and the rest, one at a time. 

“Good morning Archie,

“Good morning Dirty Dirt,

“Good morning Pienald,

“Good morning Zombie Man,

“Good morning Croaker,

“Good morning Pee-Wee,

“Good morning CawwCaww,

“Good morning Poopy-Pee-Pee,” and a giggle,

“and finally, Goooood morning little teenie sister lady! Good morning!”

She wiggled all her toes at once before suddenly jumping up, eyes blazing, fingers twitching, heart racing, “A new day! Wow!”

She turned to the Old Man and kissed the top of his head,

“I’ll be back for you. I gotta go eat Brekkie first! Brekkie first Brekkie first Break-first Breakfast tee-hee brekkie-brek-break-feast feast time to feast fast first!”

Though supplies were waning, Isa knew where to find a couple of late fruiting Paw-paws, berry bushes, and some scattered black walnut trees—and she even knew the squirrels favorite hiding spots better than they did themselves; she thought so at least. She didn’t have to eat anymore, but she enjoyed the routine of finding breakfast and she loved eating. 

Yesterday for breakfast she had forced down a yucky green smoothie with hemp and fish oil her dad had been making the past two weeks, and after that was done she was allowed her peanut butter toast and eggs. Her mom had even let her drizzle maple syrup on the toast that morning. Maybe she was tired and didn’t want to argue, or maybe something in her knew that it was the last meal she’d be having with her daughter for a long time. Twelve years old, and already out of the house! Her parents would miss her. Their only child. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like at first. Maybe she would leave a sign that she was alive—a piece of braided bark or a carving—for them to find.

She spent the whole day digging a hole in the ground by the fig tree, her tiny hands scooping up small pieces of warm dirt and gently laying it to the side. It took her four hours to make it big enough. The whole time she sang to herself, humming softly out loud the secrets of her soul—it started slow and sonorous, high and careful like the patience of a hunting bird who has found the perfect gust of wind where he can spread his wings and look below, motionless; then like a lake frozen over and covered in an inch of snow which blinded you in the sunrise, the sounds of fish swirling below and the running steps of a fox in melting snow above; the sound moved further, through sadness, now discernable, more human, into uncertainty (the music paused for seemingly random moments and might shift its timbre) and then up into wonder and curiosity breathless sounds her mouth open wide now until finally it settled into a contented murmur of sweet bouncing notes without a care where they landed on the scale. 

When the hole was finished she moved the dead goblin (she refused to believe he wasn’t one) down into it—he was so light—and piled dirt on top. The figs had stalled his death. They only bloomed once every ten to twenty years, he had told her, and the fruit granted that many years of life to whoever ate it. He really had no idea how long he had been sitting there. He warned her that she would not age for some time. She said she understood. He told her the tree had liked her, and that the fig was not for him. He had been alive for long enough. She understood this too.

She looked up at the tree: its thick trunk, bush of leaves, branches tangled like a river emptying into the sea, blossoms scattered like falling stars, their bees little astronauts, nests of sticks hiding near the top, and little mounds of dirt hiding something among the anthills near the bottom. She wondered if she would eat the next fruit it gave her.

Then she danced around it, chanting low and steady. She would not spend her years sitting. Maybe sometimes. 

But now she wanted to sing.