The Plum-Gift

When I was a girl, I loved to escape to the old orchard behind our house, a tangle of gnarled trees and wild grass that my grandmother called ‘the jungle.’ It wasn’t a real jungle, but to me it was a secret kingdom. Among the trees, there was one that stood out—a plum tree that bloomed twice a year, its branches heavy with fruit that tasted like sunshine and secrets. I’d climb its sturdy limbs, fill my pockets with plums, and chew them while I watched the clouds drift over the hills.

One late summer afternoon, as the day cooled into a honey-gold haze, I went to claim the last of the season’s plums. The fruit was smaller now, less perfect, but still sweet. I picked and ate, letting the juice run down my chin, when I noticed a shape at the base of the trunk. A cat. But not just any cat—it was the blackest thing I had ever seen, as if it had been dipped in ink and left to dry in the sun. No white patch, no rusty hint, just pure, absolute black, like a hole in the world.

A chill ran through me. I knew if my three cats—Milo, Tilly, and old Gus—saw this stranger, they’d tear it apart. So I grabbed a pebble and tossed it, not hard, just enough to scare it away. The cat flicked an ear, then vanished into the underbrush. I waited, breathing easier, when something whistled past my ear and thudded against the trunk behind me. I spun around. The pebble I had thrown lay at my feet—except it wasn’t my pebble. This one was slick with dark, sticky syrup, and it smelled of rotting plums.

My skin prickled. I turned to run, and that’s when I heard it: a voice, soft and dry, like rustling leaves, whispering my name. ‘Maren…’ It came from the bush where the cat had gone. I didn’t wait. I sprinted down the hill, stumbling over roots, my heart hammering, until I burst through the kitchen door and slammed it shut. My grandmother looked up from her sewing, her old eyes narrowing.

‘What’s the matter, child? You look like you seen a ghost.’

I told her about the black cat and the pebble that flew back, and the whisper. She set down her needle and stared at me for a long moment. ‘That tree,’ she said slowly, ‘was your great-grandmother’s. She planted it the day she died, and she swore it would bear fruit for her descendants. But there was a condition. She said, “Whoever eats the last plum of the season must share with the one who waits beneath.” I always thought she meant a person. But maybe… she meant something else.’

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about the plum tree, its branches stretching like arms. And I thought about the cat, so black it seemed to drink the light. I decided I had to go back, to confront it, to prove I wasn’t afraid. I took a lantern and crept up the hill, the tall grass whispering around my ankles. The tree stood silent, its fruit gone. But at its base, something waited.

It wasn’t a cat now. It was a figure, draped in shadows, with eyes like embers. It held out a single plum, so dark it was almost purple, and it rolled across the ground to my feet. ‘You took my gift,’ it said, its voice like dry leaves. ‘Now you must give one back.’

I knelt and picked up the plum. It was warm, pulsing faintly. I looked at the figure, and I knew what it wanted. My gift was my name, my memory, my self. But I was stubborn. I bit into the plum instead. The flesh was sweet, then bitter, and the world tilted. When I woke, I was in my bed, and my grandmother was crying. She said I had been gone for three days, that she found me under the tree, covered in plum juice, babbling about a cat.

I never went back to the orchard. I told myself it was a fever dream. But sometimes, on quiet nights, I hear a whisper at my window: ‘The last plum is yours. But you owe me.’ And I know that one day, the black cat will come for me, and I will have to give it something far more precious than a stone. I just hope I have the courage to choose my own gift. Until then, I stay away from the trees, and I never eat plums. I can’t. They taste too much like that first, forbidden bite—the one that changed everything.