Fertile Valley chapters 2 + 3

2 The Newest Scion

The road spread out in front of me like the legs of a yoga instructor, and all I could do was watch for hours on end as it bent, twisted, arched, and knotted. The journey was many hours long and boring, but it went by quickly enough, even going through a time zone shift. Thing was, I had left my apartment at roughly eight in the evening, so I was showing up in the middle of an underpopulated flyover community at two in the morning, local time.

I parked in the only big parking lot in town, outside the ramshackle community center, and finished eating a hamburger I’d bought from a diner about forty minutes back. I rolled down the window as I had my midnight meal, not wanting my car to become filled with the stink of burger grease and fries, but as I reflect on it now, I’m not sure why I bothered. If all went well, after all, it would be the last time I needed to use my car in a while for a trip that lasted more than a couple of minutes.

I leaned my head out the window as I chewed, squinting at the other cars parked around me. There were probably about twenty in total—and a lot of them I was amused to realize I recognized. That now very beat-up blue pickup truck belonged to Tom and Betty Johnson. It was parked directly under the single streetlight in this lot, and I couldn't contain a grin as I remembered a particularly passionate night that I spent with Queenie, the mayor’s spirited blonde daughter in the back of that truck. Come to think of it, that happened the last time I was here, when I was twenty-two years old or so.

“It’s all coming back to me,” I chuckled with a mouthful of ground beef and lettuce.

There was another car that tickled the ol’ cerebral cortex. My grandpa’s 1988 Jeep Grand Cherokee was parked in a distant corner, close to the highway, somewhat isolated from the other vehicles in the gravelly lot. Something about that sight made me a little sad, reminding me of how lonely the old man must have been when he’d passed away.

Seeing it did make me smile, though. He used to park that damn thing anywhere but his own land, and it seemed like the habit hadn’t changed in my absence. “It’s all walking distance,” he’d mutter. “I’ll get it if I need it, dangit.”

I tried not to let the self-loathing bubble up too much. It was the middle of the goddamn night, and sobbing in the backseat of my own car with burger grease stains on my lap at this hour was about the least classy way to kick off my new life.

I crumpled the burger wrap into a ball and tossed it back into the plastic bag from whence it came, tying it tight and tucking it under the driver’s seat just in case someone went peeping in my car when I wasn’t here. After a long drive with few stops, I decided to get out of the sedan and stretch my legs a bit.

My car wasn’t all that new itself, so when I closed the door, it sounded more like a slam to me. I winced at the noise, my eyes darting around for signs that someone heard in one of the houses nearby—but that was needlessly paranoid.

Putting my hands in my pockets, I wandered over to my grandpa’s old, rusty, rundown jeep. It probably didn’t even run anymore. I lifted up my phone and turned the flashlight function on, peering inside. I don’t know what I expected to find, but I didn’t find it.

What I did find was company.

“Hey, you!” a feminine voice shouted, startling me so hard that I nearly jumped. “Get away from there!”

I spun to face the new arrival, raising my hands in the air like I expected a gun to be pointed at me. In the city, if someone shouts “Hey, you!” to a stranger in that particular tone of voice, it basically meant you had about two seconds to make it clear you were a non-threat before things got ugly.

“Sorry,” I blurted out, “My grandfather died, and I’m just here for the f—”

“Pete?!” the voice eeped suddenly, going two octaves higher with surprise. “Peter Busch-McGinley?!”

I couldn’t see just who this person recognizing me was because she had her flashlight lumen-blasting my face. I shielded my eyes and squinted, trying to see but to no avail. “Yeah, that’s me,” I grunted. “Who’s asking?”

She lowered the flashlight at last, but I was momentarily blinded. I heard her take a few footsteps toward me, crunching the pebbly ground underfoot. And then she was right in my face.

Shoulder-length blonde hair with a red hairband holding it out of her face. Curvy body, yet slim and in a familiar, womanly shape. Blue eyes…pink pajamas. 

“Queenie?” I muttered. Of all the people it could have been, it was her. “Queenie Luna, is that you?”

She let out a loud and shameless sob, and next thing I knew her arms were around me, holding me in the kind of wholesome hug I’d almost forgotten existed. I eyed the back of the blue pickup truck as I rested my chin on her shoulder and hugged her back. “I was kind of just thinking about you.”

“Eight years, Petey,” she cried as she squeezed me tightly. “Eight whole, entire, complete, uninterrupted years. You never once came back. You wrote me birthday cards and Christmas cards only three times!”

“I didn’t realize you missed me that badly,” I said. “What stopped you from asking me to visit or giving me a call, exactly? Hell, if you would’ve said something, I probably would have dropped everything for a breath of fresh air.”

She pulled back from the embrace, leaving tear-stains on my shoulder. “It got…complicated. I was afraid to reach out. I had my reasons.”

“Why?” I asked, not getting what the big deal was or why she missed me all that much. We weren’t exactly boyfriend and girlfriend. We had fooled around a few times over the years, having actual sex just once, and that was it. When I left, I was under the impression that she knew that I might not be back for a good, long while, so this misty-eyed, sniffly-nosed welcome was far from what I expected. “What the Hell am I missing, Queenie?”

She shook her head. “So damn much. You’ll see soon enough. Where are you staying tonight?” She looked me in the eyes, and I stared right back into hers. They were pretty sky-blue orbs, and easy to get lost in.

“I was planning on crashing a few hours in my car and popping by your mom’s house in the morning. You still live there?”

She nodded this time. “Yeah.”

And that’s when I saw it. It was the first oddity I noticed, and it wouldn’t be the last. Tiny pink shapes were centered in her eyes, replacing her pupils. I blinked, thinking it was a trick of the streetlight’s glare, but the more I stared, the more certain I became. Hearts. Pink hearts had replaced her pupils, and they disappeared whenever her gaze flitted away from mine.

“What’s with that intense look all of a sudden?” she asked me.

I shook my head. I’d seen enough TV and read enough books to know when you see weird shit, you don’t say a damn thing about it until you gain a bit more context, but now it was all I could think about. “Nothing,” I grunted. But actually, what the fuck is that? I privately thought.

It was still there. It never wavered. As long as she looked at me, the hearts stayed fixed in her eyes. My heartbeat quickened. Was I dreaming? I surreptitiously pinched my asscheek. I didn’t feel a thing, but that was mostly because it was still numb from sitting in the car.

She looked at me suspiciously, then adjusted her hairband with a sigh. “You’re not sleeping in your car, anyway. You can crash in our house. Mom will be fine with it. She’s not home tonight. And…there’s something I have to show you, anyway.”

I thought about protesting, but really, I knew her well enough to accept the offer. I nodded and yawned, and with my acceptance she smiled. “I’m glad you’re back,” she sighed as she turned her back on me to start walking in the direction of her house.

“I need to grab my toiletries at least, then,” I muttered. “Would it be too much trouble if I took a shower?”

“Go right on ahead. Grab what you need, and we’ll head in together.” Her voice was so shaky, and she refused to look back at me like she was suddenly afraid to see me again. I didn’t challenge her on that fact, but I definitely noticed.

I went back to my car, grabbed my bag of luggage, and carried it toward her front porch. The front light went on automatically as we approached—motion detectors. As I saw her simple blue country home with white trim windows and vanity fencing and its impressive front lawn with rose bushes and a fancy pebbled walkway, a dozen memories ignited in my head. I shook them off for now. I wasn’t here to feel things—not yet. I reserved my outpouring of emotions for grandpa’s funeral.

But life has a strange way of spitting in the face of your expectations. As she rested her hand on the doorknob to her home, she looked back at me, her pretty pink lips curving into a frown. “I’m going to introduce someone to you in a minute, Petey.”

I stared at her and narrowed my eyes in befuddlement. “Okay…but at this hour?”

“Yes. I…I can’t wait any longer. And let me just say—I’m sorry in advance, and I’ll explain but…Promise you won’t freak out, okay?” She was now fully facing me, having abandoned  the doorknob completely to cross her arms in a self-soothing posture and blink nervously.

A feeling of dread was starting to take root, but it didn’t have much time to blossom. “Uh, sure,” I grunted. “I won’t freak out.”

The signs were there. I’m not sure why I hadn’t put it all together just yet…but my heart, at least, had figured out that something big was about to happen, because it was beating harder than I think it ever had in my adult life.

We walked through the front door and into the living room. I tried to make small talk, commenting about how so little had changed. They had a new sofa, or so I thought, but she just shushed me and grabbed my hand, prompting me to leave my luggage on the recliner as I followed. 

She escorted me to a door. It was a room I don’t think I’d ever been in before. I watched the blonde beauty take in a deep breath like she was working up the courage to take a plunge into an icy abyss.

“Here goes nothing,” she said. She creaked the door open slowly and entered the room, interlacing her fingers with mine. I followed behind her, and it took less than a second to realize what this room was. It was a child’s bedroom with pink and white striped walls, a rocking horse, some children’s books on the shelf, a corner of the room dedicated to stuffed animals, and a wall with a bunch of family photos I didn’t have time to look at.

What my eyes did settle on was an angelic form resting in a bed where a saffron-colored lava lamp illuminated her face. A little girl with golden hair, sprawled out on the pillow under her head, lay perfectly asleep. She was wearing pink pajamas that weren’t all that different from Queenie’s, save for the fact that hers had little cartoon characters on them from some TV show I’d seen advertised but never watched for obvious reasons.

By this time I figured it out, or had very nearly put it together. “How old is she?” I asked, my voice shaking.

“She’ll be eight years old this April,” Queenie said, squeezing my hand.

I turned to look at Queenie, my eyes probably hilariously wide, still with hamburger grease on my fingers and the same bic lighter in my pockets that I lent to Tammy Lynn after I fucked her just several hours leading up to this. “Am I a father?”

Her eyes filled with tears, and she nodded frantically. “Yes, you are,” she whispered. “You must be so mad at me.”

I wasn’t mad. Not really. I was sad. It was a ‘big sad’ as my own mother used to call it—the kind of sadness that just washes over you and makes you quiet. She used to get those ‘big sads’ all the time. It was how she explained her chronic depression to me, but I felt a spell of it crash over me like a tidal wave then.

Seven years old. I had a daughter who grew up without me while I wasted time, money, and life in general elsewhere, making a joke out of myself. Never once did Queenie think to tell me about the existence of my own child. Why? Why? How could she?

I ripped my hand away and left the room, finding the bathroom and falling to my knees in front of the toilet. I lost that burger I just ate in spectacular fashion, throwing up as emotions became palpable, visceral pains in my stomach, dizzying me and making me sweat.

She joined me in the bathroom and squatted beside me, rubbing my back. “I didn’t mean to keep her from you for so long. When I realized I was pregnant, I decided to not tell you right away because, well, I had my mother’s support, and you had your dream in the city. I didn’t want to take that dream from you.”

I couldn’t buy that. “That’s bullshit. Eight years, and never once?”

Her eyes welled up with brand new tears, and I did feel bad to see her cry—but I was pretty sure I had it worse in this situation. “After a couple of years, your grandfather’s health started failing, so I thought—this sounds so sick to say out loud…”

“You thought you’d wait for him to die and let me figure it out on my own when I came back,” I muttered, shaking my head. “Jesus Christ, Queenie. Wait, why didn’t grandpa tell me?”

“No one knows for sure who her father is except my mother and me. She put a moratorium on discussing it, and you and I kept our flings secret enough that no one suspected you.”

“Not to sound like a broken record or turn your own words back on you, but—eight fucking years, Queenie!” I wiped my mouth on some toilet paper and chucked it in the toilet, subsequently flushing it. “Shit.”

“At least I didn’t ask for you to pay child support,” she said in a calm voice that only made me more irritated. I looked at her like she was insane.

I forced myself back on my feet. “I’m going for a walk.”

“It’s hours after midnight,” she protested, placing a hand on my shoulder. I shrugged it off and brushed past her, storming toward the door. I turned around as I was about to leave and looked at Queenie one last time, taking in the sight of her sobbing face. “You’re not keeping me from my own family,” I said, surprising even myself. “This weekend I think I’m inheriting my grandfather’s farm. I’m going to be visiting that girl every day, got it?”

Her eyes went wide with apparent shock. “You’re staying?! You…want to be in her life?”

I blinked. “Of course I do. She’s the last remaining family I have.”

When I said that, something happened to the hearts in her eyes. I had almost forgotten about them in all the confusion and chaos that had transpired in the last several minutes, but when I looked at them then, there was no mistaking it. They shimmered for a moment—then changed from pink to red.

Confused, frustrated, emotionally overwhelmed, I opened the door. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Just come back when you’re done with your walk,” she pleaded, folding her hands over her heart—the one in her chest. “Please, Petey. Promise you’ll be back here.”

I shook my head. “I’ll sleep at that pagan monument thingy at the top of Harvest Hill. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”

“The Harvest Goddess’s statue?” she asked, cocking her head ever so slightly. “The spot where we used to watch the Fourth of July fireworks?”

I smiled a bit in spite of myself at the callback to happier, simpler times. “Yeah,” I confirmed. “That’s the spot.”

She let out an airy breath and nodded, finally resting her hands at her side. “Maybe…that’s for the best, actually. Yeah. For what it’s worth, I’m really happy you’re back, Petey,” she muttered. “I’m sorry about everything. I didn’t mean to keep her from you.”

I nodded, and then it struck me that the most important detail had not yet come up. “What’s her name?” I asked. My heartbeat picked up as I waited for the answer.

“Kylie Ann,” she said, smiling as she wiped a tear off on her shoulder. “Kylie Ann Luna.”

I stood frozen as I processed that name for probably a full minute. Finally, I nodded and stepped outside. “Got it,” I said. “Goodbye.”

3 The Harvest Goddess and Her Elf

The crisp midnight air bit my lips, chapping them rapidly. I had no words for what I was feeling then. Lost was the first one that attempted to convey the maelstrom of emotion I’d just landed into completely out of nowhere. And yet, part of me felt like I’d finally found something worth devoting a life to.

A daughter. A kid. I had a kid.

With my hands in my pockets, I walked down Main Street, the widest street in town that ran perfectly east to west. The eastern end of the road spilled back out into the highway that brought me here, but the western road headed even deeper into the country roads that made this place so special in my mind. 

I headed west, toward my Grandfather’s farm. I planned to cut through it. I’d have a look at the old man’s log cabin and farm en route to the mountain pass that led to the statue of the Harvest Goddess at the top of Harvest Hill. It seemed a prudent thing for me to do, if I was going to inherit it all.

For now, though, I had a view of all the noteworthy storefronts in Mineral Village, most of them doubling as homes to the people who owned them, typically having an apartment on the second level. Sunrise Fitness Studio was a gym run by a sporty woman who must be in her mid-forties by now. She had a daughter who was sixteen the last time I saw her, which meant—shit, I guess she was twenty-four or so now. She probably moved out of town for college and work, though.

Then there was Bob and Candy’s Everything Store. One of the virtues of a town this small was that it wasn’t appealing enough for any chains to move in. There was no Wal-Mart or Whole Foods here. Everyone in town got their groceries, medicine, and odds-and-ends from Bob and Candy’s. This place was also far out of the way enough that even CorpoMart Online wouldn’t do free shipping, so it was the one way to go. Bob and Candy’s also had a big basement that doubled as the community meeting center and a place where they used to show movies and TV shows once a week to all the young folks and sometimes families in town.

There was another oddity in Mineral Village—a combination bookstore and library, split right down the middle. The building had two doors. One door said Courtney’s Book Corner, and the other one said Mineral Village Public Library. You always knew which side you were on because the carpet of the bookstore abruptly became linoleum tile the second you entered the library portion. 

The last two spots I remembered were amusingly right next to each other and seemingly at odds with one another. Bountiful Harvest Church was a non-denominational place of worship that catered to the whole community. At least when I visited, the entire town used to go there for hours early every Sunday morning, though I was never asked to go myself. It always struck me as funny how the seemingly not-so-religious people of Mineral Village were devoted enough to show up for every single weekend service without exception, but I figured that’s just how small communities were. Skip Sunday service and you’d be talk of the town.

Next to the church was a bar simply called Yvette’s. It used to be Yvette’s Pub, but the ‘P’ in pub fell down and shattered one summer when I was visiting, and they decided to just take the ‘ub’ down altogether rather than repair the neon P. Like the church, I’d never been inside there much. 

I didn’t know Yvette or her daughter Cindy well, but I’d met them a dozen or so times over the years. Cindy was a couple years younger than me, but I couldn’t recall much about her because she was usually napping when the rest of us kids went out to play. Yvette, for her part, was maybe twenty-five years or so older than me. Back when I was a kid, I recall that she had red hair and a gruff tomboyish voice, but that’s about all I could recall.

One more building caught my attention. I couldn’t remember what it had been when I was a kid, but now it looked to be a florist’s shop, with a bunch of dazzling displays in the windows. There was a sign on the door but it was too small and too dark to read from where I was standing, so I shrugged it off. What was a bit harder to shrug off was a sort of faint blue glow coming from inside. It was an uncommon color for a nightlight. Then again it might have just been one of those mosquito zappers.

It struck me then as I thought about all these places how few men my age there were in town. True, there were only several dozen people in Mineral Village, maybe a hundred at most, but just about all the folks I knew by name were grown women now. As a kid, it didn’t seem odd to me, but as an adult, I suddenly realized why I got so much attention whenever I visited. A lot of the moms and dads in town were probably hoping to marry their daughter off to me and send them away to better lives in the city. If only they’d known what a shit show the city could be.

“What a different life I could have had,” I muttered to myself, almost laughing. But not actually laughing. Definitely not laughing.

It was March, so the air was still crisp. It didn’t take long to get to the plot of land where I spent most of my time when I came here in the past. As I walked past the old steel carport on my grandpa’s lot, I looked out at the fields—perfectly bereft of anything but dried up weeds and loose rocks and sticks. I could already tell just from the lack of noise as I strolled by the wind-beaten barn and the dilapidated chicken coop that there were no animals left on the property, either, not that I expected any. He had probably sold them when he fell ill. 

Since it had been winter, he probably didn’t grow anything all season, either. Except—no, even his greenhouse had clearly fallen into neglect. Broken windows, obvious structural damage—it would need significant repairs. I wondered when the last time was that the old man planted anything.

I shook my head and kept walking, taking the southwest road out of the farm property to the pass which led up the mountain. I passed by Mineral Spring, a place where grandpa used to soak and relax. He’d always insisted that absorbing the minerals found in a natural spring was good for his body. I had my own memories in that spring, and the sight of it did crack a smile out of me.

Behind the spring was a cave that was rumored to have major potential as a mine that oddly never got fully exploited. My grandpa claimed he used to explore it himself when he was a kid, before it was boarded up, and told me tall tales about its contents to entertain me at bedtime. Among his claims were strange voices, rare gems, and silver and copper veins so huge that no one would believe it unless they saw it for themselves. Still, he urged me not to go in there because an evil queen and giant monsters dwelt inside or some bullshit like that. Whatever he had to tell me to avoid Little Pete getting lost in caves when his back was turned for too long, I guess.

The entrance to the cave was all boarded up now. I wondered what story there was behind that decision, but wasn’t left to wonder for long before I heard an eerie song carried on the wind to me.

Long we wait in hiding here,

In stone, in fruits, in hearts, my dear,

And with each season we sang your name,

After so long, our savior came.

Apples, oranges, grapes, and pears,

Cows and chickens, deer and bears,

Romance with any woman you meet,

That’s the life we offer you, Pete,

She with golden crown so fair,

White of robe and emerald of hair,

Supple body, our fertile queen,

The Harvest Goddess yearns to be seen,

Walk the pathway up the hill,

Kiss her lips, and then be still,

Take your gift with gracious heart,

Then we’ll never be apart.

I’m not going to lie. I almost shit my pants. “Who the fuck is that?!” I blurted out. “Who’s singing that?!”

Impish giggles rang out. “Come find me, Pete.”

I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be horny or scared. Both? Both seemed apt. And in that moment, folks, I learned an important lesson about myself. If I were a character in a horror movie, I would definitely end up dead because I followed the sound of that voice and its laughter until I reached the spring again, having to backtrack slightly to pinpoint the sound.

“Over here, Pete,” the voice cooed. “Follow my voice. I have a gift for you if you can find me.”

“A gift?” I grunted, feeling sweat pooling in my armpits despite the brisk Spring evening air. “Who are you?”

She barely sounded human. “Come and find me and I’ll tell you. Come for me, Pete. Come for me!”

I winced. The way she said it, I could tell there was an intended double entendre in those words, but it only steeled my resolve further. I looked around for the voice’s source, but I didn’t see anyone—what I did find, oddly enough, was a set of my Grandpa’s old rusty country life tools lying on the ground next to a tree. There was a hoe, a rake, a shovel, an axe, a sledgehammer, and a watering can, among a few other odds and ends.

I stared at them. I crouched down and ran my hand over them, unsure why, but their presence here felt somehow significant. “Are you still there?”

“Oh, yes, Pete. I’m here. I’m always here for you.” That voice—it came from the tree just in front of me. I looked at the axe, frowning. Had I fallen asleep somewhere on my walk?

“Am I supposed to cut this tree down?” I asked. The question felt stupid—insane even, but it was all I could think. Circling the base of the tree, I was a hundred percent certain that the voice was coming from inside of it.

“Why don’t you try and see what happens?”

I grabbed that axe, settled my grip on it, and raised it back. I took a swing, feeling the force of the collision with the tree in my bones. I did that again—a bunch more times. Finally, after about two minutes, I managed to knock the little tree down.

It hit the ground with a crash, and suddenly there was a puff of smoke and a shaft of pink light, and I saw the most bizarre thing I’d ever laid eyes on in my life. It was a little elf—like a sexy Christmas elf or something. No, I’m not bullshitting.

She had pink hair and a matching pink cap with furry white trim, pale, creamy skin, huge tits for her size, and was dressed in a simple robe-like ensemble that tied around her waist, the bottom half coming out like more of a loincloth than a robe. The sides of her naked legs were exposed all the way to the bottom of her ribcage, showing off thick hips that would have been immensely arousing if she wasn’t about three and a half feet tall.

I stared at the giggling woman, too erotically proportioned to be a girl or even a teenager despite her height—then there were the details, like the pointed ears and the little elf cap, also pink, that matched the pink of her eyes, her robes, and her hair. “What the fuck am I looking at, here?” I grunted.

She bowed to me, grinning sweetly. “Pete, welcome home. Thank you for freeing me from my hiding place. Now I can help you with your destiny!”

I just stared. If I wasn’t asleep and dreaming, this had to be something else. “Am I high?”

“You must have so many questions…she can answer them! Come, Pete, to the top of the hill we go! Come come come!” She grabbed my hand and started to pull on me with all her strength. It was surprisingly more than I anticipated, and she did manage to get me dragging behind her.

I followed her up the mountain, unsure what else I was supposed to do. If I hadn’t already thrown up earlier, I probably would have doubled over and started puking my guts up then from the whiplash shock of it all.

A sexy little magical elf was dragging me up a hill to meet with the Harvest Goddess. What the fuck. This was some Harry Potter nonsense, not something that happened in the real world, on Earth. These kinds of shenanigans were reserved for video games and movies, yet here I was, watching the mostly-exposed buttcheeks of this tiny woman with a supermodel physique as they jiggled with each enthusiastic step.

“I’m high,” I decided, shaking my head and slapping my own face a few times as her booty bounced rhythmically in front of me. “Someone laced my burger with mushrooms or LSD or something. It’s the only way this makes sense.”

The elf shot a cheeky grin back up at me over her shoulder. “They don’t have Harvest Fairies in the city, then, Pete?”

“Harvest Fairies,” I muttered in disbelief. I resisted her pulling of my arm, shaking off the grip she had on my wrist. I skidded to a stop and waved my axe somewhat menacingly, which I’d just realized I still had slung over my shoulder. “Enough of this bullshit. Tell me something right now or I’m not following one more step.”

She spun around and started hovering off the ground, floating a few feet up so she and I could be at eye level with one another. I actually sighed at that. Flying Harvest Fairies. Sure. Why the fuck not? 

“What do you want to know? I’ll answer three questions.”

“Who are you?” I asked. “I don’t mean just a name. I want to know what you are and what the hell you have to do with me specifically.” I figured that was a good place to start.

“I’ll count that as one,” she giggled. “My name is Apple, and I’m the first of the Harvest Fairies. There are four of us in total, and we serve the Harvest Goddess, who is waiting for you.”

“Why me?” I asked.

“Because you are her chosen. She blessed you at birth, giving you the gifts of virility, fertility, and a loving heart. Only you can save Mineral Village and the Fertile Valley.” She posed cutely, her legs kicked up behind her, her hands folded in front of her comically ample bosom as she looked at me like a woman in love.

“Three questions, huh?” I grumbled. I stroked my chin as I tried to come up with the third one.

“Yes. And I will be generous and not count ‘Three questions, huh?’ as your final question.” She snickered impishly, quite fucking pleased with her own wit, her whole body shaking as she tried to contain her laugh.

Obviously I had a million questions. The hearts in Queenie’s eyes, what exactly I was supposed to do to save the village, why it needed saving in the first place—yeah. I had questions in droves. But I decided, after about twenty seconds of increasingly awkward silence, to ask the most prudent, practical question. “Am I safe if I follow you?”

“Yes,” she answered with a happy sigh. “Very safe. Now, come with me—she waits for us at the summit!”

Out of questions and options, I did what I think any reasonable person would do. I followed her. Sorry if that seems a little too trusting, but this was far too intriguing to just walk back to Queenie’s house and sleep on the floor like nothing happened. I decided to take the little elf chick at her word, trusting her despite not having any real evidence that I should other than what she said.

She led me up the hill until we reached the lookout point where a statue of an old pagan goddess stood, staring down at us from her pedestal. I’d seen the statue before, and it was always impressive, standing close to seven feet tall including the one foot platform, and the woman it depicted was as thick as a stack of pancakes. 

The goddess had wide hips, large breasts, a classic hourglass figure, and all the other calling cards of feminine fertility which she was supposed to embody. Her hair was long, flowing down to the backs of her knees, and she had two thin braids framing her face. She had a face that spoke of timeless loveliness—a kind that transcended cultural and societal ideas about beauty. You could drop that face anywhere in the world, it didn’t matter. She’d still be gorgeous.

“My compliments to the sculptor,” I muttered. Like I said, I’d seen the statue before, but it had always been something in the background of other activities. Watching fireworks, hanging out with the other kids in town, whatever it was, this statue never really played into it. If I ever tried to approach it, the other kids would even guide me away from it as quickly as they could.

Apple grinned at me. “Kiss her on the lips,” she said.

I arched an eyebrow at the elf whose existence I was only just starting to accept. “Sure,” I grunted in exasperated defeat. “Why the hell not?”

I climbed onto the pedestal and rested my hands on the statue’s waist for balance. I closed my eyes because the whole thing was so awkward. I didn’t know what else to do, so I leaned in and planted my lips on it.

The cold, hard lips of the statue melted instantaneously into lips that were warm, moist, and inviting. I felt a pair of delicate hands cup my face, and I opened my eyes in alarm.

The statue had come alive right in front of me. The Harvest Goddess was staring directly at my face, her eyes themselves seeming to smile. “The prodigal child has returned at last,” she cooed in a sultry voice with an accent that sounded weirdly Scandinavian. “Peter Busch-McGinley. Welcome to your destiny.”