Five

Next day, all day Merle fussed and fretted, trying not to go back to the orchard. Finally Bridget snapped at her.

“What is wrong with you? Get out from under my feet! I have all these stems to pound, and the first lot of flowers need to come out of the pot. So be off!”

Merle took that as a sign, if not actually an order, to go back to the orchard.

*   *   *

She stood for a long time at the end of the path, waiting.

Hearing nothing, seeing no one, she set off up the path and around the side to the orchard gate.

She waited again.

It seems such a shame, she thought to herself.

Such a shame that here are all these apples and pears going to waste, and no one picking them and they are all falling on the grass and going nasty, with only the worms and maggots to enjoy them.

So that she wouldn’t be seen from the house, she got down on her hands and knees and crawled through the orchard, pretending she was an animal, her hare maybe.

Hares always moved silently, rarely seen, she knew that.

She sat in the long grass, and found a windfall that the worms hadn’t yet, and as she chewed its sweet flesh, she began to think about the dragon.

He wasn’t a dragon really; she knew that. He was just an old man. She knew that her mother had explained that some old people in the village found it hard to do things. Or that sometimes they found it hard to hear, and that could make it seem like they were rude, when really they weren’t.

Suddenly, it occurred to Merle that maybe the old man wasn’t picking his apples, because he couldn’t.

She’d only had a brief glimpse of him, but he did seem very old, and his shoulders were hunched.

That seemed sad to Merle, and she thought that he’d probably love to have an apple, if only he could pick one.

She ran into the orchard.

She picked two apples.

Merle ran as fast as she could to the front doorstep, left one apple there, and then ran home, saving the other to eat on her rock at the top of the hill.