Chapter 1
Fruit of Tomorrow
At Alder School, the orchard behind the library had been locked for twenty years. Mina found the key in a poetry book no one checked out because the cover showed a pear staring judgmentally at the reader. The key was warm, green, and rude enough to bite her thumb.
Inside the orchard, every tree carried a different season. One branch snowed. One hummed with bees. At the center grew six silver apples. Mina picked the smallest and saw herself ten years older, applauded by strangers, utterly alone.
Back to contentsChapter 2
What Everyone Saw
By lunch the secret had become impossible. Theo saw himself as a champion swimmer who never spoke to his brother again. Amara saw a laboratory named after her and a mother whose calls she ignored. The orchard did not show doom. It showed bargains, and that frightened them more.
The headmaster arrived with an axe and a story. The orchard had been planted to guide students, then locked when guidance became obedience. Parents wanted certainty. Teachers wanted success. Children began choosing futures because fruit had told them to.
Back to contentsChapter 3
Seeds Instead
Mina refused to let the trees decide for them. She buried the silver apples beneath the oldest trunk and asked for something smaller than prophecy. By morning the orchard had changed. No fruit hung from the branches. Instead, seed packets covered the grass, each blank until held by a student.
Mina's packet read Ask twice. Theo's read Call him. Amara's read Rest is work too. The orchard reopened as a garden class, messy and uncertain. Years later, none of them lived exactly as the apples had shown, which Mina considered the first useful lesson any tree had ever taught.
Back to contents