1.8 billion miles from the sun, my roots dig deep into the soil of a small garden. I am a curious thing—an aspiration. Everything else on Miranda is ruthlessly utilitarian, but I am ornament. I am beauty. This garden nominally exists to facilitate some small part of the colony’s gas exchange, the replacement of carbon dioxide with oxygen, but in truth, I am a reminder that with enough care, beauty can grow even on this dark moon.
They all come to me, the people of this world. I am witness to their tears, to their joys, to their heartbreak, and their love. Love was a hard thing for me to understand, alone in this garden, but some of these people teach me. They show me. I’ve learned the word’s meaning with every heart carved into my bark. Maybe that’s why, as the boys sit beneath their own such carving and the grass complains of how their bodies bend its blades, I shower them with petals from my blossoms—my own little gesture of love.
“The ships will be here soon,” says Jun, who smells of sandalwood, who wove my blossoms into his curls as a child. His breath drips with melancholy as he makes the pronouncement.
Elliot—smaller, less even-keeled—sounds… not sad, but perhaps defiant. “You should come with me, to Titan.”
The air runs dry. The breath halts in Jun’s throat. “You know I can’t.”
“Why not? An aerostat repairman doesn’t make much, but we could get by.”
Jun’s tone is playful now. “And what, be your trophy wife?” He pushes against Elliot and their laughter is like wind chimes. “Come with me to Ceres and be mine instead.”
Elliot sighs, leaning back against my trunk. “What if we just stayed here? The last two people on Miranda.”
Jun’s voice darkens again. “Elliot, the economy is in shambles. The mining operation failed. We have good jobs waiting for us. Half the colony would kill to be so lucky.”
Elliot doesn’t answer, but he leans against Jun, resting his head on his shoulder. Above them, my heartwood aches and my fragrant petals drift down like the gentlest snow.
A month passes. The colony is quiet when they return to the garden, where fat crab apples the size of cherries now buckle my whip-thin branches. The ships arrived last night—I heard the foreman say so this morning. Most of the children and the elders have already piled into them, thousands of travelers into the belly of the whale.
But here are Jun and Elliott again, in the grass, at my feet.
“Elliot?” Jun stops as he crosses through the garden. “I was afraid you’d already boarded.”
Elliot’s tone is sour, biting. “Why? What’s it matter if our last time seeing each other was yesterday or today?”
“You might as well ask why this tree bothers to bloom if it only produces small, bitter fruit in the end.”
“I do ask that.”
I so badly want to tell him the answer, but humans never know how to listen.
Jun presses on. “Why did you come, then? Just to twist the knife?”
“I wish.” Elliot kicks at the grass, which complains to me on the fungal network until I tell it to hush. “I came to ask you again, if you’d come with me.”
Jun’s voice is hoarse. I hear his heartbeat quicken; his breaths quiet. “Elliot…”
“I understand.” I know enough about tone to know that Elliot is lying. “Big tenure track job on Ceres. A lot more exciting than me.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Jun steps forward at the same time Elliot steps back and as Elliot opens his mouth to speak, as I feel the air around them move in dark patterns, as the grass chatters anxiously about what it feels in his footsteps… I quiver. I groan. I demand they listen. My branches creak, my leaves sigh, and in one great commotion, my apples cascade to the ground.
“Are you alright?” “What was that?” “The tree, it just—” The boys’ words come in a rush, overlapping each other in stops and starts until Jun pulls Elliot into him, too quickly, and they tumble among my fallen fruit. Elliot lands on top of Jun and their warm breath mingles in the crisp, recycled air—carbon dioxide that makes my leaves shudder.
“I’m going to miss you,” Elliot murmurs.
“I know.” Jun’s voice shakes. “But maybe it won’t be forever.”
And the boys lay there, Jun holding Elliot, until the overhead lamps dim to a simulacrum of a memory of an Earthen sunset and the spaceport’s chimes signal the start of their final night on Miranda.
The next morning is still.
No children.
No people.
No Elliot and Jun, tumbling in the grass.
The air grows thinner each time I inhale carbon and exhale oxygen.
I exist to be a thing of beauty—no one has enough use for the crab apple tree to uproot me and carry my garden on board one of the great ships that brought me here when I was just a seed. No, I will be Miranda’s last witness, and this garden will be my tomb.
But as I suffocate, as I end, I want you to know what I saw.
At midnight, in the darkness, two boys came back through the garden on their way to board the ships. I don’t know if they boarded separate ones or if, in the end, it was too much and one gave in to the other’s demands to come with. But I do know this: on their way through the garden, they stopped beneath my boughs and they gathered the fallen crab apples—my fruit, the vessels of my bitter seed—and took them along.
