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There is a tree at the end of the world It grows around a broken old brick wall—the wall is broken because the tree is strangling it, bursting through its mortar with its silver-red roots The tree is stunted because the as built too close to its root systes are at the end of the world
The end of the world is easy to find There’s a boat up north will take you there for twenty dollars and an apple If you don’t have the cash, Annie’ll probably take you anyway But the apple isthat she breaks off a strand of her hair when she wants salt for her soup She wears a black hat with a silver pin, so you’ll knoho she is, and the boat-horn sounds like a eeping But if you don’t bring her an apple, she’ll take you to Bar Harbor with the rest of the tourists, tip her hat and give you a nice little coupon for 20 off your lunch at some nameless cafe You have a nice summer, noeetheart
The dock at the end of the world needs so to replace the planks, but sooes, and the saot it into her head to go to art school in New Ha, with a h one of the dock lines broke last year and a poor trireht off the pier All hands drowned, except the Red Hound of Mykenos, who bit the sea until it spit hirowls at the su finals week It’s ok, though If the end of the world wasn’t a safety hazard, there’d be hotels here by now
The tree at the end of the world is an apple tree Trust ranate, soe the as basketballs, the color of the sun Soood and evil Sonant for six years Soround before your second bite Trouble is, it’s damnably hard to tell one fro, so for the kallisti apples, and frankly, we’re a little more careful with our receipts now
Black Sally built the wall at the end of the world She said she did it to keep the wolves out, away fro little slices of green stuff all over the tree to keep the local fauna off She said it was shards of the World-Emerald her cousin sent fro stamped in the stuff, and the World-Emerald doesn’t smell clean and fresh as the Irish countryside
It smells like bones
Anyway, it wasn’t the wolves There’s only three of them, and they’re not so bad Sure, they s, after all If I were a dog I’d probably chew on the tree, too Mostly, they lope about looking hangdog and hoping Black Sally will fall in love with one of them and make them human She tried it once, but he ran off to be an aeronautical engineer and she said that was the end of wolves for her Everyone knows Sal built the wall because of the meridian That’s the actual end of the world, you know The tree and the dock and all, they’re just decoration You can’t see the meridian, or smell it, or hear it And sometimes it moves, just to be contrary But it stays on the other side of the wall, because Black Sally told it to The wall says: Danger: High Voltage It says: Keep Behind This Line Until Your Nah, son If you, because you didn’t listen to Sally or Annie or an and step over the meridian, well, that’s it for you, kid You vanish—there’s no poof, or popping noise, or flash of light, but you’ll blink out, sure as Sunday It’s not very nice to watch We post signs, but there’s no telling some people
The coffee at the end of the world is bitter Harry Half-a-lion sells it for a dime a cup out of a little kiosk about half a mile from the tree Used to be a nickel, but times are hard Harry used to be solions and snakes andout stalls for some rich old man Harry rowed hiave him for that He meant to take an apple for some lady back home, but I can’t think of a soul who looked at those apples and didn’t sneak a bite for themselves Harry sat down in the dust and cried, poor soul I think he otten the kind that tells you you’re naked, no ot on your back Naked and weak and young, and no help for any of it Harry gets his coffee ship, and everything smells like beans for a hile he roasts the beans hi bronze barrel You should see his ar out of a storybook When folk co for the tree, he pours them little dixie cups of hot coffee—it’s cold at the end of the world, even in July Apples don’t grow in the heat, you know Harry doesn’t allow crea is too decadent for hiht to offer croissants Harry just punched hiht in the nose
That said, we do eat, even at the end of the world Idun wears an apron and not much else, even when ice forms on the ends of her hair The wolves watch her and their tongues loll out of their ineers She keeps her stove s: apple pies and apple tarts, caramel apples and baked apples and apple upside-down cake, apple-spice bread, apple pudding, apple popovers, apple ja-poranate pie alnuts sprinkled on top to the annual bonfire We all had a good laugh Idun doesn’t say ot a friendly faceI think she had a husband once, but she doesn’t like to talk about it Anyway, it’s all pretty dangerous stuff,the apples like that They smell wonderful, but I never eat them I don’t want to knohat that applejack knows
There are aphids on the tree at the end of the world Little reen ones, and they love the apples A butterfly landed on the tree once, and then another, and another, and we all came out to see them, they were so beautiful, blue and white and black Black Sally sighed like her lover had coreen wave and devoured the butterflies, so fast I alot they were ever there, like the aphids could eat my memory of them, too I think the aphids knohat the applejack knows They eat from all the apples They’re dead for all time and alive forever and they know they’re naked and they don’t care, and they know they’re the fairest and they know the butterflies are, too I’m afraid
of theot out these old perfume atomizers and sprayed cayenne pepper and le, tiny, green laughter—they shriveled down to nothing for a day and then swelled up again, rier than before There used to be a nice kid who sold little silver apples on chains down by the wall Not anymore I don’t really want to talk about that We leave the aphids alone, now
Once, a woman came to the end of the world She was dressed all in black, with a high collar Annie let her off at the dock—Frigg wasn’t even born yet, and Annie had pigtails but a ferryive her any coffee, but she just stared at hirumbled and pulled the tap on his therht into the meridian and vanished She walked up to the tree like she’d known it all her life
“What do you want it for?” said Idun
“My daughter,” said the woman
“Is she pretty?” Idun always loved pretty girls, like they were her special sisters