The Orchard of Black Glass

The first time Ada saw the orchard, she didn’t understand what she was looking at. She had been hiking deep in Briar Hollow, alone except for the hum of insects, when she stumbled over a fallen log and crashed onto a bed of dead leaves. The taste of dirt filled her mouth. As she pushed herself upright, wincing, something glimmered through the branches ahead.

Rather than sunlight catching on dew, it looked like hundreds of tiny mirrors glinting in the shadows.

Curiosity tugged her forward.

The trees grew in neat, unnatural rows. Their bark—if it could even be called that—was smooth, dark, and glossy, like obsidian polished by centuries of hands. Each branch held fruit the size of plums, all of them pitch-black, almost translucent. They looked like solid droplets of night.

Ada touched one of the fruits.

It was cold. Much colder than it should have been.

A faint crackling sound—quiet, but persistent—seemed to come from inside it.

That was when a voice behind her said, gently:

“You shouldn’t touch those.”

Ada spun, heart thudding.

A man stood a few feet away, half-hidden in the dappled shade. His clothing was the same color as the trees—dark, reflective in certain angles. His face was pale, almost colorless, and his eyes held no whites. Only glossy black surfaces that reflected her own startled face back at her.

“I’m sorry,” Ada stammered. “I—I didn’t know this land was private.”

The man smiled. It was too slow. Too deliberate.

“It isn’t private,” he replied. “It’s simply…forbidden.”

---

Ada stumbled through an explanation—she had wandered off the trail, she didn’t mean to trespass, she was leaving right away. The man watched her steadily, his unblinking gaze following every movement.

“Why are they forbidden?” she asked despite her fear, nodding toward the orchard.

His smile thinned.

“Because they grow things that should never be harvested.”

Ada swallowed. “Are they poisonous?”

“In a sense.” The man approached one of the trees. The branches didn’t rustle. Didn’t sway. They remained perfectly still, even as his shoulder brushed them. “This orchard doesn’t produce food.” He tapped a black fruit with a long, elegant finger. “It produces memories.”

Ada frowned. “Memories?”

“Memories,” he repeated, softening the word like a lullaby. “The kind our kind wishes to forget. Sorrow. Regret. Fear. When they become too heavy, we cut them away and plant them here.”

Ada stared. “Your…kind?”

“My kind,” he echoed, as if savoring the sound. “You wouldn’t know us. We live beside you, but not with you.”

Ada took a slow step back. “Okay. Good to know. I’ll just…go.”

The man tilted his head. “Would you like to taste one?”

Her stomach dropped. “No. No, thank you.”

“It wouldn’t be someone else’s memory,” he said, voice lowering to a hypnotic murmur. “It would be one of your own. Something buried. Something you don’t wish to remember. Something that hurts.”

His tone brushed against her nerves like a cold finger.

Ada’s mouth went dry. She had a few memories like that—things she’d spent years suffocating under layers of distractions and busyness. She had no desire to relive any of them.

“I’m leaving now,” she said, firmer. “Goodbye.”

She turned.

“Be careful on the way back,” the man said softly. “The orchard doesn’t always let go.”

---

Ada didn’t run, though she wanted to.

She forced her steps to stay steady, her breathing even. The forest around her seemed different than before—too quiet, too aware. Every crunch of leaves under her boots sounded like it belonged to someone else walking just behind her.

After thirty minutes of fast walking, she should have reached the trail.

She didn’t.

The woods looped endlessly, paths folding into one another. Trees she was sure she’d passed an hour earlier now stood ahead of her again, identical except for the glimmer of black fruit where their leaves should’ve been.

Her pulse quickened. “No. No, no, no.”

She walked faster.

Then faster still.

Branches scraped her arms. Thorns snagged her jacket. Her breath grew hot and ragged.

From behind her, the man’s voice drifted through the trees, carried on a breeze that felt too cold to be natural.

“You touched one.”

Ada froze.

Her hand flew to her pocket. She pulled out the black fruit she hadn’t realized she had taken, her fingers trembling. It must have slipped off the branch when she brushed it earlier. But now that she held it, it throbbed faintly, like a beating heart trapped inside solid glass.

Crack-crack-crack.

The sound came from within the fruit—sharper now.

“Ada,” the man’s voice whispered, though he wasn’t anywhere in sight. “It’s opening.”

She dropped it instinctively.

The fruit hit the ground and shattered like a glass ornament.

Spilling something that wasn’t liquid.

It was smoke—dark, curling, reaching toward her ankles like hungry fingers. As it touched her skin, a memory slammed into her consciousness so violently that she screamed.

She was thirteen again, sitting in the passenger seat of a crashed car. Smoke curled from the engine. Her father leaned against the steering wheel, unmoving. She remembered the smell. The heat. The way she had reached for him with shaking hands—hands too small, too helpless.

“No,” Ada gasped, stumbling backward. “I don’t want this.”

But the orchard didn’t care.

Shards of the shattered fruit pulsed, releasing more smoke—more memories—more pain she had never processed.

Another memory hit her like a hammer:

Her best friend’s face when Ada told her she wasn’t coming to the funeral. That she couldn’t handle it. The way her friend had looked at her—shocked, then disappointed, then gone.

Ada fell to her knees.

“No,” she sobbed. “Stop.”

“You see?” The man’s voice floated from behind her. “The orchard keeps what you plant.”

Ada turned to find him standing only a few feet away, his black eyes glowing faintly.

“Why are you doing this to me?” she whispered.

“Doing?” He crouched, tilting his strange face toward her. “You did this. You carried these memories with you. You let them rot. All I did was give them a place to grow.”

“I want to leave.”

“You can. But not empty-handed.”

He offered her another fruit from the branch beside him.

Black.

Glossy.

Crackling faintly.

“This one,” he said, “holds the memory you fear most.”

Ada shook her head violently. “I don’t want it.”

“You must take it,” he said. “Or the orchard will take you.”

A long silence stretched between them.

Ada stared at the fruit.

Its crackling grew softer. Sadder. As if it recognized her.

She reached out with trembling fingers.

“Good,” the man whispered.

The moment she touched it, the world dissolved.

—

She stood at a graveside. Rain fell hard and cold. A small coffin lay before her, nearly swallowed by mud. Her own sobbing voice echoed around her—the voice she’d forgotten because she’d forced herself to forget.

“I should have watched him,” she heard herself cry. “I should have watched him…”

Her little brother.

She had looked away for two minutes at the lake.

Two minutes.

And he was gone.

Ada collapsed, both in the memory and in the orchard. The grief she had buried for years burned through her like fire.

When the vision faded, she lay trembling on the forest floor, gasping for air.

The man watched her with a strangely gentle expression.

“It hurts,” he said softly. “It always hurts. But now the orchard has taken its share. You are no longer its keeper.”

Ada struggled to her feet. “Can I leave now?”

“Yes,” he said. “You may go.”

She backed away slowly.

Then turned.

This time, the forest didn’t twist. It didn’t trap her.

Within minutes, she found the trail.

And then the road.

And then her car.

But as she unlocked the door, she froze.

In the reflection of the car window—

A dark orchard stretched behind her where the ordinary woods should have been.

And her eyes—

Just for a moment—
reflected nothing but black.