Late Harvest

By Laura Rodley

            Marty flung back one of the long brown braids Eamon had loved so much, that he’d pulled on to tease her in third grade, and then woo her in eighth grade, and later, when they were married, pulled on to pull her closer. Why did he choose to die before her? It wasn’t supposed to be like that. He’d promised: they would die within months of each other when they were old and gray. How crass and blind of him to make such an impossible promise. Now the beloved braid was in her way as she dug the spade deep into the soil that she had turned over and tilled with her Mantis tiller.

            Too sad to live in the house full of Eamon’s memories, she’d sold their house, quit her job and bought the house in the country Eamon and she had dreamed about. A tiny one, like the carrots that she had planted so carefully last year, her first year in her new home, carrots that had grown stunted, like her heart. Stunted, and sore. The townspeople weren’t friendly either: the women saw her as a threat because she was still very pretty, and the men, well, they offered tips on how to grow her garden when all she wanted was to be left alone. At the feed store, she overheard one of the clerks say she’ll never make it here, as she left. She’d show them.

            She shoved the spade into dark soil and heard a squeak. Not sure if it was a fluke of metal against rock, she reached down to move the rock. She pulled the tip of it and it shrieked. She flung it away.

            “A fine howdy-doo!” A four-inch-tall creature spread his hands wide and shook them at her. “There I was, sleeping, minding me own business, and ye had to disturb me! Do ye know what ye’ve done?”

            Marty’s two long braids swung side to side as she shook her head.

            “If you don’t know, I don’t know why I should tell ye,” the creature brushed off his short brown pants and stamped away.

            “Tell me, I want to know.”

            “Ye’ve woke me up, me girl, and I was very happy sleeping. Though I slept so soundly because of a spell old Horlicks put on me, but ye’ve broken it, sure as sure. Knocked the spell right offen me. Now I’m bound to help ye, and sure as sure I don’t wanna. You’re wearing very strange clothes for a girl. Pantaloons. Don’t let the watch catch ye wearing them or they’ll burn ye as as a witch.”

            “They’re pants. Everybody wears them. They stopped burning witches years ago.”

            “Oh aye. What year is this, pray?”

            “It’s 2026.”

            The creature flung his arms wide, flung himself backward and covered his eyes. “I’m going back to sleep again, I can’t stand it. All me friends are gone.”

            “Suit yourself. I’ve got to get on with my planting,”Marty resumed digging. “Might as well be back in the time of witches; the townspeople are most unfriendly, thinking I won’t make it, making fun of my skills as a gardener.”

            The creature sat up. “They have a point there, my dear. I dreamed of tiny stunted carrots, and I can see you have a few dried up ones over in that pile there.

            “Last year’s failures,” said Marty.     

            “Let it not be said that we elves cannot be gallant. Too small to ever be knights, we can still be chivalrous. Let me introduce myself. My name is Eldred,” the elf bounced up on his wooden clogs. “I have a plan. Willing to try it?”

            Marty set her gloved hands on top the wooden handle of the spade and listened.

            Soon there were wooden pallets set around her garden tied together with baling twine hiding her garden from prying eyes. She had two battery-operated radios tuned either to Gaelic-speaking stations or Trad—Irish traditional music—because Eldred had fits of crying without it, he missed his friends so.

            The townspeople complained about the music, but it wasn’t loud enough to lodge a noise complaint. If they tried to get near the pallet fence to peer over its wall, they tripped on wires set a foot above the ground that set off a series of tiny tied bells. Eldred loved the sounds; Marty was getting used to it. She learned to brew him the tannin-rich tea he required and burn the edges of his toast, covered with special-ordered Marmite. Every time he tried to leave the garden, pieces of his nose or fingers would fade, so he stayed within its boundaries. “Don’t think I have long,” he lamented. “Get cracking, me girl. We’ll make those townspeople eat mud, or me name isn’t Eldred.”

            He convinced her to enter the annual October garden show. The pallets had faded gray in the strong sun. The morning of the show, Marty went round the fence snipping baling twine, leaving one intertwining rope.

            Townspeople were lined up beyond their garden wall.

            “Ready?” Eldred asked.         

            Marty nodded yes as he reached out and pulled away the front wire in a flurry of bells and she reeled in the intertwining rope, allowing the pallets to fall away like sunflower petals, revealing orange, red and maroon dahlias, roses, tall carrot and beet greens, and late blooming hollyhocks.

            “It’s wonderful,” murmured the townspeople as they crowded forward.

            “Thank you Eldred, I owe it all to you,” Marty said, as he faded, gray as the pallets, tipped his battered hat and disappeared.