She was conceived where she would die.
Her father, a dark and handsome traveler passing through town, caught the fancy of the flighty daughter of an innkeeper. The woman had a head full of curls and a dimpled smile. One glance at the handsome stranger whose bath she was drawing was enough to send her falling hard and fast.
Call it pure instinct, an ordinance from the laws of attraction, or maybe the terrible combination of being young, bored, and attractive, but the two couldn’t tear themselves apart. They were wild and incandescent, tossing aside trite notions of shame like how they tossed aside their clothing, and found themselves in the center of the courtyard, wrapped up in each other like ribbons.
Her father rolled over and laid on the grass with his head resting on her soft thigh, soaking in the afterglow of the night stars. Her mother stroked his hair while talking of dreams of a grand wedding, how they would move far away to live together in a big house in the city. Her father let her talk, too busy reveling in the warm salty air. He took two bites of a juicy yellow mango and tossed the fruit on the grass behind them.
He was wasteful and careless like that, and often left things behind, like a mango. Or the heart of an innkeeper’s daughter.
The only vestiges left of his beautiful ghost was the tree growing in her courtyard, the baby growing in her belly, and the dark cloud hanging over her head.
She was born on a warm August afternoon to a mother who bore her out of wedlock. The idle tongues of the town had kept themselves busy during those nine months, speculating and gossiping and smearing the family name. The innkeeper was so embarrassed by his dear daughter’s indiscretions that he fully planned to steal the child so he could drown it in the river, then claim to the townsfolk that it died in the womb. It was wicked, but at least he could save face.
But he clapped eyes on the baby girl with large calf eyes and her mother’s curls, and he didn’t have the heart to carry on. He held the baby close and wondered how he had gone on for forty years without her.
Her mother was always fanciful and gave the child some frivolous name picked up from a book of short stories, but no one ever called her by name; she responded to every term of endearment that rolled off their tongue. She was the darling jewel of the inn, capturing the heart of everyone who passed through.
Everyone except her own mother. The woman wasted away her days, perched by the windowsill, overlooking the dusty road. Though she vehemently denied it, they all knew she was waiting for the man that changed the way her world spun around its axis in a night – with his midnight eyes and honeyed stories from the mythical cities he wondered through. It was a shame, the town said, she used to be so full of life. Now she was this husk of a woman.
She was five years old when the tree growing in the courtyard started blooming with mangoes. And once it started bearing fruit, it simply wouldn’t stop, and within the first week, they had their wicker baskets overflowing with golden mangoes. The innkeeper threw his hands in the air and declared it a miracle, thinking they could sell the fruit in the markets and made some extra money to get them through the slower months.
But the fruit was persistently bitter and left an acrid aftertaste that was difficult to washdown. Her mother had said it was because the tree had grown from an act of betrayal, and those things rarely did taste sweet.
The wife of the innkeeper’s son was, however, a resourceful woman. Out of ingenuity, her aunt had taught herself out how to brew a strong wine from a barrel of the fruit. It was hard and tasted like shit, but it got the patrons drunk well enough and then they didn’t mind the taste so much.
She was seven when she developed a taste for the bitter mangoes. She would spend her evenings sat against the tree trunk and gobbling down mangoes under the pink light of the sunset. Juice always dribbled down her bony chin and soaked into her clothes, so she walked around, permanently perfumed in its sugary fragrance.
Her family wondered how a girl who smelled so sweet could eat such bitter fruit.
She was ten when her mother decided to take off. Over the years, her cheeks caved inwards forming sallow canyons, her corkscrew curls had grown limp, and she grew more and more reclusive.
The woman came home one day from a rare outside excursion, a book in her hand, and she immediately took to a flight of fancy, basking in fantastical dreams of travelling: of dancing through cities, of scaling mountains, and of wandering so far outland that she would catch a glimpse of the sea. The blue moon that had waned, and she began to glow as if light lived beneath her skin.
Her mother couldn’t be caged within the inn walls no more, so she packed her scant belongings in a bag and set off, hand in hand with a woman from the apothecary who wished to study exotic flora; and the pair were never to be seen again. No one knew where they are or how their fevered plans unfolded, but one could speculate that they lived their dreams and had a marvelous few years before settling down together in a little house close to the sea and a garden full of strange plants.
She was twelve years old when she realized her mother was not coming back. She had stopped eating mangoes. One day she simply spat out its yellow flesh mid-bite and squelched it underfoot. The fruit she had once loved dearly was now putrid on her tongue.
Her mother was right, betrayal rarely did taste sweet. Neither was learning that she was a pittance of a consolation compared to a fleeting fever dream.
The innkeeper reached the same conclusion, and his heart couldn’t take the strain of losing his daughter. He withered away before their eyes and spent his frail days sitting by the kitchen table with a paring knife in his hand and a basket of mangoes that needed to be peeled, leaving the inn in the hands of her uncle and aunt.
She was thirteen when she learnt to bury her grief in cooking. And the one ingredient they had in abundance were mangoes. She found solace in rolling up her sleeves, tying her shawl around her waist, and working dough. She stood over the stove for hours, stewing the mangoes in spices to make fragrant chutneys and curries, pastries, and pies. The mangoes didn’t taste as bitter when masked under the heavy hand of cinnamon, cloves, and star anise from the apothecary. She quickly became a good cook, the patrons loved her food, and brought more steady business to the inn.
Her innkeeper grandfather kept her company, helping her peel and slice the fruit. They kept each other in warm comfort over the loss of the woman who broke their hearts by shattering it slowly, one piece at a time.
She was sixteen when her aunt turned to drinking. Her aunt started by skimming mugsful from their wine caskets once a week, but as the months stretched by, she would guzzle several tankards a day. She grew rowdier and more boisterous; the once shrewd woman had stopped taking care of the inn, and spent her days reeking of vomit and booze, picking fights and gambling with her patrons.
Her aunt had not taken well to the news of her husband’s death. He was killed trying to stop a drunken brawl that broke out over the bar of their own inn. And now the woman seemed determined to be as downed and degenerate as the men who had killed him.
She was nineteen when her aunt had hung herself to avoid paying her gambling debts. She stepped into the courtyard one morning with a wicker basket at her hip, ready to pluck some mangoes when she found her aunt hanging from a branch, illuminated in the light of the dawn.
It was a relief, to be honest. She had the spent the last few years cleaning up after her aunt’s messes, and keeping a sharp eye on the money box, making sure the drunkard didn’t steal too much so they could still pay the bills. She could now run the inn and care for her ailing grandfather in peace.
But her aunt, it transpired, had gambled away the inn, and two men came pounding on the door to claim their winnings. They let her and her grandfather stay; they both knew how to ferment the mango wine that the inn was famous for. And they liked her pastries.
Instead of looking after her drunkard aunt, she now had to cater to an inn full of them. And the terms of endearments that rolled from their tongues tasted less like honey and more like vinegar.
She was twenty-one when she had had enough. Her keen eyes always noticed the sap that cried from her tree would cause angry rashes where it brushed her skin, and the roots of an idea began to grow. She spent months collecting drops of sap as she picked mangoes, until she had a whole bottle filled. She simply sealed it and stored it at the back of the pantry shelf. She never intended to use it – her nerves would never allow it – but when things became too much too bear, she would crouch in a corner of the kitchen, breathe deeply, and turn the bottle over in her hands. It made her feel like she had some semblance of control.
And then, one stormy night, a dark eyed man dripping in rain walked through the inn doors, looked at her curly hair and dimples, and called her by her mother’s name. She went straight to the kitchen and pulled out the bottle of honey heavy sap and poured generously into everyone’s wine.
Perhaps she misjudged how much she poured into her father’s cup, perhaps he had a tolerance, maybe he tasted the adulterated wine and stopped drinking, but he looked her in the beady dark eyes he had given her while the other men writhed around the floor groaning in pain.
“You would dare murder your own father?” He asked.
“Your careless heart murdered my family.” She said. “I thought I should return the favor.”
He turned into the cloak of night and left his daughter once more. And this time he never passed through the cursed town again.
The mangoes stopped tasting so bitter as the sun rose over the lifeless bodies.
She died where she was conceived. On the day her grandfather passed peacefully into death as easily as one slips into sleep. She wrapped him in a blanket and placed a gentle kiss on his forehead before picking up his paring knife from the kitchen.
She slit herself under the mango tree her blood flowed to ground and watered its deep roots.
Word of what she had done to the men who tried to take over her inn spread like a catching fire throughout the town, and rumors of her lingering spirit made sure no one tried to claim her home again.
The tree ran wild, spreading seedlings into an orchard that overgrew the wooden boards of the inn. The hands of time erased the stories of those who had lived there, but the trees remained, feeding those passed by with its sweet golden mangoes.
