//------------------------------// // 41 - The Island of Apples // Story: Age of Kings // by A bag of plums //------------------------------// It was a nice and quiet day over in Avalon. The winds journeyed down the calm valley, blowing at the long grass as it passed, making it look like each blade was performing a dance of sorts. The multitudes of apple trees stood strong against the wind and the cold, with only the leaves rustling as the breeze passed. A few apples fell from their perch on the branches, but as Golden Nugget would say, you can’t always catch them all. Honeygold stood below such a tree, holding her basket high. She had guessed correctly as two apples shook in the wind and fell right into her basket. “Ah got another two, pa!” she yelled over to where her parents were standing. Golden Nugget was busy dumping more apples into larger baskets and Honeygold’s mother, Apple Bean, was busy sifting through them, tossing out the bad ones. They both had on long coats, protecting them from the cold winds that flew along Avalon. That was something Honeygold had learnt recently. You don’t keep the bad apples with the good ones. That only spreads the decay and that wasn’t something any farmer wanted. “Well done, Honeygold!” Golden Nugget replied. “Ya know what? Your mother was right. Perhaps it’s time we let ya go on and do as ya see fit. You’re old enough now. We need to start training you up to manage this when we’re gone.” “Oh, don’t say that pa! I’m sure ya still have much left in ya!” Honeygold skipped over with her half-full basket and dumped the apples in the larger basket. “Ah’m only thirteen years of age now. You two still have long to go!” “My, thirteen already. They sure grow up fast.” Apple Bean rubbed her daughter’s head affectionately. “Has it already been three years since we pulled Emerald Edge from the lake?” “Ah pulled her from the lake,” Golden Nugget reminded. “We know, dear, how heroic of ya.” Apple Bean smiled at her husband’s cheeky look. “But golly, it’s been that long already. It feels like only a month had passed when Emerald fought in that tournament.” “Woman, your sense of time needs a fixin’.” Golden Nugget nudged her. “Oh, you!” Apple Bean tried to tackle Golden Nugget, but it didn’t work. Instead, she got tackled back down as Golden Nugget opened a can of tickling on her. “Stop! Ha ha, stop! Ha heheh…” “Parents…” Honeygold chuckled to herself and let them continue, prancing back over to the trees to get more apples. She wasn’t the same little girl she was anymore. Now, she was old enough to be her own person. She was going to prove to her parents that she would be able to handle things on her own and what better place to start than to carry a basket full of apples back to them. Honeygold waltzed away, heading to a different orchard to get more apples back. “Come on and fall, apples, Ah’ll catch ya!” She looked up at the trees, waiting. Then the young farmer realized the apples weren’t their usual red in this tree. And they weren’t as plump as they normally would be. In fact, they looked shriveled, like they had been squeezed. “Huh? What’s wrong with these apples?” Honeygold continued to watch them. She knew it was already winter and she had to don two coats just to stave off the cold, but surely dried up apples weren’t normal. “What the hay is wrong with them?” she asked aloud. She kicked at the tree, sending one of the shriveled apples down into her hands. On contact, parts of it flaked off and disappeared in the wind. “What…? What happened to ya?” From experience, Honeygold knew the winter wind didn’t destroy their apples like this. Avalon wasn’t even a place that had snow. Hay, Honeygold had never even seen snow her whole life. She only heard tales from her pa about how crops couldn’t grow when it snowed and people had to collect them before winter arrived. She muttered to herself as she picked up her basket and moved to the next tree. It just had to be the time she could finally manage things on her own. The next tree had grey shriveled up apples as well, making the young girl raised her eyebrows in surprise. Surely this was no regular problem. The surprise on her face began to dwindle more and more the further she went through their orchard. All the trees along this line had the same shriveled up apples. Honeygold was going to go back to where her parents were to tell them, but then she remembered how proud they were of her. They trusted her to be more responsible now and to handle things on her own. She couldn’t go over to them now of all times. No, she had to solve this problem herself, and she was going to get to the bottom of it. “Ah’m going to get to the bottom of this.” Honeygold first looked at the tree’s roots. Inspecting it from its roots and then slowly making her way up, the farm girl found no problems with the tree itself, which puzzled her. If the tree didn’t have problems, that meant it was a fruit problem, but there was no way all the fruits in all of the trees in this row were bad. Scratching at her forehead, the blonde haired girl went along through the rest of that orchard, looking up at all the trees. Now, over on their farm, the Apple family had three orchards, one on the west, along the Sparkle Pond, one east, and one next to their farm. She was currently at their west orchard and most of the apples here were shriveled. Something was going on here that puzzled her greatly. “What in the hay is goin’ on with all the apples here?” Honeygold stomped a foot. Then she saw something that puzzled her even more. In the next tree, just beside her, Honeygold saw… “What are those? Ain’t like any fruit Ah’ve seen.” She walked forward. In the tree, were shapes that resembled pods, sharper at the tips and rounder in the middle. There were various colours, ranging from brown to purple, and they seemed to be moving up and down, like each one was breathing. “Fruits don’t breathe. I must be, like pa says, hallucinimatin’.” Honeygold put her basket down and rubbed at her eyes. A cold gust of wind blew through the orchard, forcing her to grip the sides of her coat and pull it tighter around herself. The pods also shook in the breeze, but then to her surprise, one lifted a wing and scratched at a visible nose. “Wing? Nose? Those aren’t fruits.” Honeygold took a wary step back as each one began opening their eyes, looking down at her. They weren’t fruits or pods or anything like that. Not at all. They were bats, and they numbered at least a dozen, each one looking at her with beady red eyes. “Umm… hello there…” Honeygold smiled and waved. One by one, each bat righted itself, then began flapping their wings and squeaking, leaving the tree in a mass.. Honeygold turned to run, but then noticed they weren’t flying after her. Instead, they had gone to one of the other trees of another row, one that still had plump red apples, and to her horror, they bit into the apples with long fangs and began sucking them. The red apples began to shrivel up, turning a dark grey. At least Honeygold now knew what was happening to the apples. Gathering her courage, the girl ran back to the trees, waving her hands madly. “Go on! Get! Shoo! These apples ain’t for any of you!” One bat turned to shriek at her, but otherwise, they paid no attention to her. Instead, they began moving from tree to tree, sucking each apple dry. “Pa and ma will kill me if Ah cannot stop this!” Honeygold grabbed her head. “Come now, Ya don’t need to eat those apples! Ah-Ah can get ya somethin’ else to chew on.” The bats continued to ignore her. Honeygold picked up her basket and tossed it at them, clipping one across the wing. In unison, they all turned and hissed at her, sending the young farmer ducking behind one of the trees. When she looked back out, the bats were still sucking more apples dry, making her furious again, but in the end, all she could do was despair and watch as the bats finished up another row of their apple trees. Thankfully, they seemed to be full, now swirling in a circle in the air, forming a vortex of sorts as they flew around each other. “Now what in the hay are y’all doin’?” she yelled at them. She wished she could simply zap them with a bolt of lightning, like Emerald had done those few years back. “If y’all come down here, Ah’ll teach you a thing or two about messin’ with my apples!” Instead of flying down to her next, the bats spun in one more circle before flying up over the trees, traveling north. “Now where are ya goin’?” Honeygold asked aloud. But she didn’t like it. Not one bit. She was older now, smart enough to know that the bats leaving won’t mean anything if they just come back again. Instead, she was going to go see where they were headed and see if she can do anything about it. So Honeygold was off, following the swarm of bats as they left the orchard, heading towards the Midland Burrows. The Burrows were the home of plenty of varmints, but Honeygold had never seen bats like these before. Sure, they got the occasional rabbit or snake, but fruit-sucking bats were new. She ran along after them for quite some time, leaving the dirt paths that led to her farm and heading out across the grasslands, where she could eventually make out a cluster of mounds sticking out from the ground. The winter air bit away at her exposed skin, making Honeygold dip her hands into her coat pockets, her fingers wrapping around the ragged fabric, but she ran on, knowing that turning back would only cost them more apples later on. The young girl spotted them hovering in the air for a few seconds, then the whole swarm of them darted into a large mound, leading deep underground. “Aha! Now Ah know where ya live!” she cheered. Honeygold didn’t stop to think what to do next. Instead, she followed them right to the burrow entrance, where it became too dark to peer through. Hearing scary tales of people being grabbed into the night, Honeygold wasn’t too fond of the dark. Remembering where this burrow was, Honeygold ran along back to her home, finding her parents dumping more apples into the crates. “Pa, where do ya keep them, uh… them light sparker things?” Honeygold tried to imitate the action with her hands. “The ones that ya flick together and create sparks.” “Oh, ya mean the flints?” Golden Nugget wore an amused smile. “We keep them outside, near Joey and Springer’s water trough. “Figured it’s too dangerous to keep indoors.” “Thank ya, pa!” Honeygold skipped along to her house. “What so ya suppose she wants them flints for?” Apple Bean scratched at her orange hair. “No clue, Beanie.” Golden Nugget watched his daughter go. “No clue at all.” In no time, Honeygold was back at the burrow, a torch in her hand and the flints in her other. It took her some time trying to figure out how to light the torch, but she eventually got it, remembering how her parents would rub them together to start fires. The torch now illuminated the burrow, revealing a tunnel going deep down into the earth. Honeygold gulped, then descended. She was going to teach those bats a lesson so they would never come and eat her apples again. How she was going to do it, she did not yet know, but she knew it was her responsibility to do so. She was older now. She had to start learning how to do things on her own. The inside of the tunnel was much colder, making Honeygold feel relieved that she had gotten a torch, though she had to keep it rather close to feel its warmth. She just made sure to move slowly, not wanting the fire to catch on to her coat. The burrow led down in a straight line, still going deeper underground. Honeygold looked back at the entrance, only seeing a small sparkle of light now; she had really traveled far down and it still kept on going. “What are these bats even doin’ down here anyhow?” she said out loud, then listened as her voice echoed down the length of the tunnel. She could hear them now, squeaking and chittering somewhere in the darkness. The young farmgirl kept going down and down, eventually spotting flat ground just beyond the tunnel, leading from dirt to rock. When she emerged out of the dirt tunnel, she lifted her torch, noting she was now in a large cavern, which even had streams of water coming down from holes in the walls, one of them even creating a small stream, which cut across the cavern floor. “Wow. Ah can’t believe all this is under us.” Honeygold walked forward, looking around. Then she saw the bats, up at the cave ceiling, clustered among a row of… what did her pa call it, stalac-stalag- stalagmatites or something. “There ya critters are. Hey, Ah don’t want ya coming back to our farm, ya hear? Them apples are not for you to eat! Ah mean, ya can have a few, yes, but don’t eat them all! We need them for our trade!” The bats paid her words no attention. “You are pushin’ it, ya know?” she grumbled. She picked up one of the stones on the floor, then tossed it up at the bats. It sailed up, then clattered away into the darkness, not even touching the ceiling. Honeygold was about to throw another, when the cave’s temperature suddenly dropped. She dropped her stone and pulled her coat tightly around herself. “Brrr… it’s freezin’ in he-here.” She watched as her breath turned into fog. And then a hand was placed on her shoulder and she jumped, spinning around. There was a man behind her. A very unusual man. His skin was white, and he had dark red eyes and black hair, and the strangest part was that he was only clad in a worn pair of ragged pants. Nothing else. And it was absolutely freezing down here. “W-Who are you?” she asked, stepping away from him. The man watched her with his red eyes and licked at his lips, which were almost as white as his skin. “Why, this is my home, little girl. I should ask who you are what you are doing here.” Honeygold pointed at the bats on the ceiling. “These varmints have been eatin’ from my apple orchard.” “Yes. And?” The strange man waited. The more the girl looked at him, the more odd she found him. “Well, Ah came here to stop them from eatin’ up all my apples!” “And how do you plan on doing that?” The man laughed, then warped his mouth into a thin smile, which Honeygold didn’t like one bit. “Besides, these are my pets. You shall not harm a single one of them. Only I am allowed to.” “Pets?” Honeygold looked at him with disbelief. “Why on earth would you want to keep them as pets? They keep eatin’ our supply!” “They are vampire fruit bats, little one.” The man walked closer to her. “They need to feed off fruits, and it seems your apple farm will do just nicely for them.” The cold seemed to be radiating off of the man, because when he stepped closer, Honeygold felt her shivers increase. “But they can’t! We won’t have enough of supply to go around!” “But if they do not feed, then how will I?” The man put a hand on his bare chest. “Unless… unless you would like me to start feeding on humans once more?” “Feedin’ on hu- what?” Honeygold scurried away from him, keeping her torch in front of herself. “You’re one of them cannonballs!” “You mistaken, young one. I am much more than that.” At that, his body began to darken, turning more purple in color. His eyes began glowing red, shining brightly in the darkness as the bats flocked down to him. Honeygold backed away, scrambling on her rear as the bats flew in a circle around the man. “To answer your question, girl, I am not one of those ‘cannonballs’,” he said, his voice growing deeper and more guttural. His body began growing thick with long black hair and he slowly became more hunched. Wings sprung from the undersides of his arms and his ears began to extend to the top of his head, which now had a short snout, sporting two long fangs. “I am a vampire.” Then he grabbed one of the fruit bats and pinched his fangs into it, like how what the bats were doing to the apples. The bat began to shrivel, and soon, turned a dull grey and stopped moving. Honeygold watched the bat’s limp body fall to the cavern floor with an echoing thud, then screamed as loudly as she could, scrambling further into the cave. The vampire stood at the entrance, feasting on his bats, at the same time, blocking her only way out. “No, no, this all cannot be real…” she whispered to herself, tears threatening to emerge. “Ma, pa, where are you?” They were, of course, still back at the farm, probably not knowing where she had run off to. But then she remembered why they wouldn’t have known. She was a big girl now, trusted to get work around the farm done on her own now. She couldn’t disappoint them by cowering here and waiting for a vampire to eat her. No. Ah have to do this myself, because Ah can do this myself. “Ah… much better…” The vampire wiped his mouth as Honeygold approached. “And now, you girl…” “Stay back!” Honeygold approached him and his swarm slowly. “Ah have a torch. Ah’m not afraid to use it.” “Do you want me to feed on you this badly, little one?” The vampire motioned for the fruits bats to return to the ceiling. “For so many years, I have fed off the humans of Trotsylvania, but no more. I have come to value human life, so I shall not take it unless I deem it fit to do so. Would you like me to do so?” Honeygold felt a tear run down her cheek in fear as she continued to approach, her torch held high, but she was grown up now. She needed to act like it too. “Ah-Ah don’t want you to eat me. B-But Ah w-want you to leave my apples al-alone! We need them for trade. Without them, w-we starve.” “Like I said, my bats need to eat. If not your apples, then what?” The vampire leaned so close to Honeygold that she could smell his breath. It smelt like blood. “My bats are tastier when they are full. We help each other, you see. I find them a source of food, they give me a source.” The girl turned away and tried not to sob. “Ah-Ah’m sure we could work o-out some ag-agreement here. Ah don’t m-mind if your bats eat my apples, so long as they don’t eat so much. They ate out three rows of my apple trees today.” The vampire growled and stood back up. Since turning into his true form, the vampire now stood more than double Honeygold’s height. “I will tell you what, girl. How about you bring us a crate of apples a day? If you supply us, I will not need to send them out. If they remain with me, they do not feast on your orchard.” “But Ah can’t! A crate’s much to heavy for me to carry out here,” Honeygold protested. “There must be somethin’ else. How about Ah grow you a new apple orchard? Right here in the Burrows?” The vampire scratched at his chin. “That does sound like an idea. But an orchard would take time to grow. By then, my bats will starve and I will have no choice but to go hunting again.” Honeygold began to lower the torch, regaining her composure. “What if Ah leave the one crate out at night? By the farm? Then you can come get it, at least till the trees here grow enough. You must be strong right? Bein’ a vampire and all? Ah’ve heard tales from my pa, about you turnin’ into bats and havin’ huge strength and all.” “Not all of it is true... You make a hard bargain, girl. But you are a smart one, are you not. I shall accept your offer.” The vampire stretched out his hand. “My pa gave me a good edjumacation.” Honeygold wiped at her eyes and managed a smile, reaching out her hand to shake the vampire’s. His long claws wrapped around her tiny hand and shook it firmly. “Thank you, Mister Vampire.” Honeygold’s smile widened. “Ah’m Honeygold.” The vampire began to shrink in size until he was finally in his human form again; the man with the pale complexion. “I am known as Omul Bates. I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Honeygold.” “So, Mister Omul, what did ya do before comin’ here to Avalon?” The sun had already gone down by the time Honeygold returned to her farm. She could already see her parents searching for her by the orchards, torches in their hands. When they saw the one in hers, they immediately ran over from where they were, meeting Honeygold halfway and throwing their arms around her. “There ya are, Honeygold. We were so worried.” Apple Bean hugged her daughter close. “We went to the west orchard, but ya weren’t there and the apples were all shriveled up. We thought maybe something got ya.” “Nothin’ got me, ma.” Honeygold snuggled closer to her parents. “Ah just made a new friend, is all. And he promised to deal with our shriveled apple problem. We won’t have to worry ‘bout that again.” “Sounds like an adventure ya had. Ya have to tell us all about it.” Golden Nugget ruffled his daughter’s hair. “My new friend kinda wants it a secret.” Honeygold grinned. “He ain’t too fond of others just yet. Maybe one day.” “Ah suppose we can trust ya.” Golden Nugget picked her up in a big hug. “You’re old enough to do things on your own now. We’re very proud of ya, Honeygold.” “And remember, we love ya so much.” Apple Bean pinched her daughter’s cheek. “Ah love ya both too!” Honeygold leaned against her father’s shoulder. She’d never thought she’d ever make friends with a vampire, but they weren’t so bad. And then she had solved this problem all on her own. She knew she was ready to handle things on her own from here. Wait till Ah tell Em all about my new friend!