Publisher's Mind: Beneath the Cherry Tree

Her lips pressed against mine, soft and dripping with the taste of paradise. I embraced her longingly beneath the cherry tree’s warm, pink leaves in the early autumn sun, wrapping my arms tightly around her waist.

A new light shone in her brilliant, green eyes as the kiss I had waited for since early childhood came to end, my soft, blue eyes glowing just the same. I brushed my hand through her chestnut hair, barely able to contain my ecstasy.

“Took you long enough,” Emilie teased.

She was right. We’d known each other as long as I could remember and now we were in our mid-teens. She was my best friend, and I hers. We had only each other as we watched the world fall apart around us.

The Final War had started when we were eight. It’s crazy to think that had only been seven years before that day beneath the cherry tree. The war lasted a long three years filled with hunger and disease. Our area was too far from anywhere important in Middle-of-No-Where, Ohio to see the fires that raged across our country, but that was never much of a reassurance when every news broadcast on the television and radio that remained in-tact reminded us every day of the struggles along the coasts, knowing it could reach us at any time if the levee broke.

You’d think our parents would have stayed strong, but they had completely deteriorated by the end of the first year. Emilie’s father started drinking when her mother passed away from a particularly devastating flu that had ravaged the nation when the war began. My father just left. My mother still functioned normally during the day, keeping up with her job in fast-food for minimum wage. Once she was home it was like she just fried out, holing herself up in her room for hours on end. Eventually, she broke and the sickness got her, too. Part of me died every day I watched her fade.

I became homeless, living in a tent in some local woods. The world was burning and this place was all I had ever known. That, and Emilie would refuse to leave her father, while I refused to leave Emilie.

We kept each other company throughout countless days and broken nights filled with tears. The world was strange and jaded, but we were familiar. I held her when the bombs fell at the end of the war, but it was just as friends. It had always been that way and we were both afraid to change it.

None of it mattered that autumn day. I don’t even know what came over me. We were talking about something I can’t remember and I just leaned in and kissed her. She looked so beautiful with rose pink petals dancing around her in the wind.

I awoke from a long death beneath the cherry tree. I had forgotten what it was like to be happy until that moment when the rest of the world melted away. Emilie was mine, and I hers.

“Run away with me.”

“Only if you’ll always hold me like this.”

“I promise.”

We kissed again. I owed her a hundred kisses, then a thousand more. My cheeks became streaked with joy.

The days that followed were never easy, but having Emilie by my side made every moment worth it. With the war long gone, she and I wandered about the ruins of a once-great nation. Many cities that used to shine brightly with towering buildings and magnificent lights had been left with no illumination at all, while others had been fortunate enough to thrive under primitive, tribal-like governments. The people in those cities were usually kind, though often wary of strangers. Who could blame them? Anarchy swept the nation in the wake of the war’s end.

It was easier to live outside the remains of civilization. The country remained lawless, but the mountain kept us fed. That, and I loved the endless expanse of green; finding in it a serenity that allowed me to forget the war had happened. Emilie even befriended a hare she made me promise not to trap. I guess I grew fond of that adorable, brown ball of bouncing fur, too. I loved watching Emilie cuddle Jasper.

My happiness and pride grew with Emilie’s swelling belly. The dark storms of our past had become distant, fading memories that left the ground fertile for new life to bloom.

I was hunting when I saw the tracks. Standing out against the landscape that hadn’t been disturbed by another human for years, I wasn’t sure how to feel about the three sets of footprints I found following the riverbank up the mountain. All I knew – all that mattered – was they were heading my home where Emilie rested in wait for my return, already late in her pregnancy.

I thought I could catch up. Why had I spent so much time hunting that day? The worst part was hearing her scream when I was nearly there. Perhaps I shouldn’t have called back. Maybe then they wouldn’t have known I was on my way.

Seeing her lie there, covered in blood and peppered with bruises, I felt that last sparkle of my soul shrivel away. A blood-curdling scream rose up out of my chest as I chased after the ones who had taken her from me. I wish I could remember their deaths. Blinded by rage, I tore them apart until there was nothing left to tear.

With nothing left to keep me in the mountains, I began to wander again. It felt different, colder. I paid little mind to other people. Everyone I ever loved had gone, taking what was left of me with them. Most of the time my feet would carry me on their own accord. It’s not like I cared where I landed, anyway.

The taste of autumn’s early breeze, forgotten and familiar, filled my senses when I realized where I was. Before me stood a cherry tree left frozen by time; its soft, pink petals dancing in the wind. For a brief moment, nothing had changed. Emilie and I were still young, holding each other tightly for that first, passionate kiss.

I wept for love and for loss, happiness and sorrow. The cherry tree still stood while my world had been cut down. I lay beneath the tree, holding my love as I slept.

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Charles Whaley the publisher of The Adventurous Pen and author of Through Kaleidoscopes. He spends his nights in a cave in the foothills of Appalachia while working on his next book.