Otherworldly Orchards

Every Saturday the Pteetneet City Park was transformed into a bustling farmers market from seven thirty am until one pm. Cerise, not much of a morning person, had no idea the market even existed until after her boyfriend Huck moved in.

“I’ve never been to the downtown farmers market; do you want to go next weekend? We could get some fresh fruits and veggies for a date night dinner,” Huck said one morning while he served Cerise her coffee.

“Sure,” Cerise said, taking the cup and blowing the steam from the top.

“I’ll set the alarm for six am.”

“Six?!” She nearly dropped the coffee in her lap.

“It opens at seven thirty.”

“How late does it stay open? I don’t think we have to get there right when it opens. Let’s show up at eleven and we can get lunch while we are there.”

“We don’t want all the good stuff to be sold out. Some vendors clean out before ten am. All that’s left will be the weird-shaped carrots and I’ve heard you can get some good peaches.”

“Nine am is my best offer, bro,” Cerise gave Huck a little side eye and grin as she took a sip from her coffee.

The next Saturday, slathered in sunscreen and flip flops slapping the pavement, the couple made their way to the market. It was ten thirty by the time they arrived because Cerise, after struggling to get out of bed and get dressed, was determined to stop for an iced coffee on the way.

“Me having coffee benefits us both, if you think about it. I’ll be much more pleasant.”

The couple walked, hand in hand, through the market square. They bought jars of honey, homemade pickles, and handicraft candles. They would stop to inspect each stall to decide what would be good to create for their date night dinner. They finally found an eggplant, zucchini, tomato and decided to make a ratatouille.

They made their way from one end of the market and back around before stopping at the final corner stall: Otherworldly Orchards.

“Oh, hey, let’s stop here. We can get some peaches to make a pie,” Huck pulled Cerise to the stall.

“Afternoon folks,” the attendant said, “welcome to our farm. We’re actually out of peaches. You have to get up really early if you want to catch the peaches. I heard you mentioned pie though. If you are wanting to make a fruit pie, then you should really try… let’s see…”

The farmer moved to the back of his stall and juggled some stacks of small green and blue cartons. He appeared to be choosing very carefully before snapping his fingers, pointing, and snagging one of the cartons.

“One of our newest orchards, the green plumicot. These little guys are packed with flavor and make a surprisingly delicious pie.”

Neither one had ever had a plumicot, they were feeling adventurous, and who better to recommend the right fruit for the job than the actual farmer. The couple agreed to the suggestion and added the pound of fruit to their bag.

Cerise slipped the ratatouille in the oven while Huck began pitting and quartering the plumicots. He mixed the sugars and spices into the fruit and added the filling into a buttery crust. He cut a little heart shaped heat vent in the center.

The ratatouille was ready to come out as the oven just in time to slip the pie in to bake.

“Love, this is really delicious,” Huck said.

“Today was a fun date day. We should do this again.”

“It would be nice to get there early enough to get some of those peaches.”

“Ugh,” Cerise rolled her neck around and then popped another bite of eggplant into her mouth, “fine, I will get up at eight am.”

“and…”

“and I’ll make my coffee the night before.”

The couple smiled at each other and continued their meal. The timer on the oven went off.

“Pie is ready!” Huck stood up and donned his oven mitt and pulled the pie out of the oven.

“It smells good,” Cerise inhaled her head back.

Huck cut two pieces out of the circle and plated them next to a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream.

“Fresh, fresh, fresh from the oven. Let it cool down before you take a bite,” Huck set her plate in front of her.

Cerise forked the tip of her pie and brought it up to her lips. She blew a small stream of air over the pie.

“I don’t want to wait,” she said between breaths. Then she took a bite.

“How is it?”

“Oh, that’s good. That’s really good.”

Then her wavy black hair began to turn green. Huck noticed it first at the roots as leaked out and spun down the loose curls at her temples.

"What’s wrong with you,” Cerise asked.

“Your hair. How did you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Go look in the hall mirror,” Huck pointed. He took a bite of the pie.

Cerise stood and walked to the hallway to look in the mirror. Sure enough, her hair had turned a bright shade of lime green.

She admired the change in the mirror for a moment and then turned back to look at Huck. Cerise’s jaw dropped.

“What?”

“Look at your hair!”

Huck nearly toppled his chair over as he dashed to stand next to Cerise in the mirror. His short cropped blonde hair was dark purple.

“It’s the pie, right?” Huck asked, pulling a hand through his hair and letting it fall back into place.

Cerise went to the table and picked up both their pie plates. She handed Huck his and they each took another bite.

Cerise’s hair faded from lime green to into a glittery silver. Huck’s hair stayed purple but lengthened to his shoulders. Huck shook his hair back and forth on his head and watched it sway.

They looked at each other and laughed before taking another bite. This time Cerise’s hair twisted into tight bouncing curls while Huck’s faded into a baby blue. With each bite they took their hair changed in style or color: bubblegum pink mullets, tangerine braids, mint steps, crimson ombre perms.

The couple didn’t stop at their single pieces of pie; they continued to eat until they reached the last crumbs.

“That was so much fun,” said Huck, sporting a lilac mohawk. He was on the floor with his back against the wall. He stubbed a crumb with his pointer finger and tucked it in his mouth.

“We aren’t stuck like this forever, right?” asked Cerise, she had her rainbow-colored bob resting in Huck’s lap.

By the next morning their hair had gone back to their original cut and color.

The following week, at eight thirty am, Huck and Cerise found themselves outside Otherworldly Orchards again. This time there was a line at one end of the stall that wrapped around the corner and appeared to go across the street and behind an apartment building.

“Oh man, what’s the line for?” asked Huck as he walked up to the other end of the stall and greeted the man they had met last week.

“That’s just the peach line. You can order anything else we have here.”

Huck gave a pouty look to Cerise.

“We are not standing in that line, babe,” said Cerise.

“Honestly, we’ll probably sell out of peaches before the line finishes. We always do,” said the vendor.

“We really liked those plumicots you sold us last week; can we get some more of those?”

The vendor raised a quizzical eyebrow and pointed to the man trading peaches for cash, “I think you talked with my brother.”

“Oh! I didn’t realize you were a twin. Uh… well, do you have any of those green plumicots.”

“Sorry man, we’re out of plumicots for the season. If you are looking to try something different might I suggest…”

The vendor reached below the stall wall and pulled out a yellow carton filled with bulbous yellow and green striped fruits.

“Here we go. Striped tiger figs! They make a great appetizer. Cut them in half and bake at 350 for thirty minutes with a little rosemary and then add some honey on top. For a real treat you can stop about, uh, three stalls down at Fromage Farms and get a good goat cheese to serve with them.”

Huck and Cerise agree to give them a try and purchased the figs. They also picked up the recommended goat cheese, sausage, onions, and peppers for a skillet dinner afterward.

Cerise spooned dollops of goat cheese onto the roasted figs while Huck tucked the skillet into the oven and set the timer.

“The appetizer is ready if you are,” Cerise said.

They each took a fig and stared into each other’s eyes as they took a bite. Nothing happened.

Cerise ran her fingers through her hair, “Je ne pense pas que cela ait fonctionné.”

“O que você disse,” said Huck, “que merda?”

The couple each took another bite of the fig.

“ʻŌlelo ʻoe i ka ʻōlelo haole,” said Cerise with a smile.

“Nie mam pojęcia, co powiedziałeś,” said Huck, rubbing at his throat.

Another bite and Cerise responded, “meow meow mrow meow mow.”

Another bite and Huck, his voice pitched as if he had inhaled a dozen helium balloons, “are you speaking cat?”

The couple laughed until they were wiping tears from their eyes. They continued to eat and attempt to talk to each other, devolving into hand symbols and gestures. They were laughing so hard that they nearly burned the sausage.

By the end of the night both Cerise and Huck were speaking English; Cerise in a deep baritone and Huck with a Scottish accent.

“We need to get some of those peaches,” Cerise said.

“Se’ yer’ alarm fer six am, ya wee lassie,” Huck said.

The following week, sure to their word, the couple was up and out the door by six thirty am. They beelined directly to Otherworldly Orchards where a line of a dozen people had already formed.

When they reached the front of the line they found one of the twins ready to exchange money for peaches.

“Your recommendations have been wonderful,” Cerise told the vendor.

He scrunched his eyebrows in response and looked over his shoulder at his brother, “I don’t think we’ve met; I usually do the post-peach cleanup. You may have talked to one of my brothers.”

As he spoke a third identical man entered the rear of the stall with another box of peaches.

“Ten dollars for the half dozen,” the vendor said and Huck exchanged their cash.

Huck and Cerise decided to order out for lunch. They didn’t want to wait to see what their peaches could do.

Huck sliced the peaches into sections on a plate and brought them out to the dining table. They each took a peach in their hands and tapped them together in a ‘cheers’ motion. Then they took a bite.

“Oh… my… gods…” Cerise said, melting into her chair.

“That’s a good peach,” Huck said, his eyes rolling into the back of his head as he chewed.

Cerise sat up and looked at Huck, “Do you feel any different?”

“No, you?”

“No,” Cerise found her way to the hall mirror and examined herself.

“Maybe it has a delayed reaction?”

The couple continued to each peach slices throughout the afternoon, regularly checking their appearance and their speech. They ate dinner on the patio and watched the sun set together.

“Maybe we ate them wrong?” Cerise suggested.

“I mean, we didn’t cook them. We cooked the plumicots and figs.”

“That must be it!”

“We’ll try again next week.”

The following week, before the alarm even went off, Cerise was shaking Huck awake, “Hey, let’s get going. I want to be first in line.”

The couple was so early to the market that Otherworldly Orchards had not even opened yet. They were first in line and as soon as the triplets showed up Cerise was ready for them.

“What’s the secret to the peaches?”

“What do you mean?” asked one of the triplets.

“What’s the magic behind them?”

“Magic?”

“Yeah, what do they do?”

“Well,” one of the triplets scratched at his head, “the soil is treated specifically for peaches.”

“No, I mean why do so many people want your peaches. What do they do?” Cerise insisted.

“Oh,” said another of the triplets, “they are damn good peaches. Did you want to buy some? We have a long line and would like to get them moving.”

“So, they aren’t anything special?”

One of the other triplets stepped over to them, “do they need to be something beside very tasty?”

“No, I guess not,” Cerise said.

Huck and Cerise bought another half dozen peaches and made their way out of the peach line and through some of the other stalls. They purchased some fiddle heads and fresh pasta to make for dinner that night as well as a couple cantaloupes to serve with vanilla bean ice cream.

Cerise had stayed quiet most of the rest of their time at the market and as they walked toward home, she finally spoke, “Do you think they aren’t magic? Could they really just be damn good peaches?”

“I don’t know,” Huck said, taking her by the arm, “I think they did do a little magic.”

“What do you mean?” asked Cerise.

“They got you out of bed before six am.”

Cerise playfully slapped his arm and then hugged it a little tighter as the couple walked homeward.

“Hey Cerise,” Huck said.

“Yes Huck,” Cerise asked.

“Nice melons.”

THE END