We With Daisies Lie

The Orchard

The grass rushed in a blur beneath my feet as I ran down the aisle between the apple trees. I hid in a tiny crevice behind a dew covered brush. The sun broke through summer white clouds and everything was still shimmering from the recent rain showers.

A single engine plane hummed across the blue sky above, dragging behind it a banner for a new real estate company. The sound of cars on the highway rose and fell away again like waves in a far off shore. I was as quiet as a little boy could be while hiding from his sister. "I'll find you little weasel!" her voice bounced in the orchard and faded into the trees.

"Don't call your brother a weasel," I heard my grandfather say behind her. "It's not nice."

"There you are!" she yelled pointing at me through the branches. I shot up and sprinted alongside the Macintosh reds- I had no chance of outrunning Bambi, she was faster than anyone I'd ever met, and she knew every move I was going to make before I made it. I cut across the aisle by climbing a tree and jumping off the other side, I don't know how she got so close so fast, but there she was, waiting for me when I dropped. We darted toward the tree line ahead and that's when we heard it.

"Stop!" our grandfather yelled in the tone of serious business. "Come back from there!" he ordered. Bambi and I looked at each other. He stood behind us, nervously waving for us to come to him. Ahead of us there was a wall of bushes, a line we didn't know we weren't allowed to cross.

Before going back to my grandfather, I squinted past the brush, all I could see was that there was a clearing behind the bushes."What's over there?" Bambi asked- he came and took us both by the arms, the only time he ever physically touched us other than to giving hugs.

"Never mind what's there, I said don't go that means don't go understand?"

"Yes," we responded in unison. He dragged us away warning that anything past the last brush in the orchard was forbidden.

"But why?" I asked, my curiosity bubbling.

"...If you go there, you can never come back to stay with grandma and me you understand?" he said. We knew he wasn't serious, he would never turn us away, but if he was willing to say it, we were never going to test it. We agreed the mystery simply wasn't worth the risk. Whatever it was behind those trees, it would have to stay secret.

* * * *

Emily had lived through the night. Menace lay beside her on the bed, he had tucked himself into a melancholy curl. The bite had been dressed but still bled on and off without much consistency. During the night her temperature had begun to rise. Now, she was nothing less than fire personified.

Her chin vibrated as shivers would prickle their way up through her spine. I held her, my own arms shaking just as much as hers.

"Do you think she came back?" Emily muttered. She had been talking to herself for a while; it took a minute before I realized she was lucid.

"Who?" I asked.

"My mother." She was lying on her side, her eyes facing the dog; she turned and lifted her face to me. "Do you think she came back from the dead?"

"She passed away a long time before all this started," I said drying the sweat from her forehead.

"But what if she's one of them, wandering around out there?"

"She isn't," I pushed loose strands of hair from her face.

"It won't be me anymore you know, when it happens. Don't be afraid. Don't hesitate," she looked at the gun on the dresser, then closed her eyes and fell asleep. The fever was uncertain, I didn't know if that would be the last thing she ever said to me or if she would wake up again in a few minutes and still know I was there.