The steering wheel of Cameron’s sedan slipped as he turned into the farm’s wide driveway. The car veered toward one of the oaks flanking the entrance as he slammed his foot on the brake, skidding to a stop on dry dirt and leaves. 

He leaned back into his seat and closed his eyes, wiping his sweaty palms onto his jeans. He took a deep breath. Two. Three. Put his head in his hands, the groves of trees beyond the gate rustling in the wind, whispering amongst themselves, growing violent. 

He looked over his shoulder at the road leading away from this place, but the knowledge that he’d already handed half of his life savings to the Farmer in a grocery store parking lot the week before held him there. It was the first of two payments which, he was told, were nonrefundable. The second half sat in an envelope in the center console—he’d stashed it there twenty miles into the drive when he felt it mocking his stupidity from the passenger seat. 

After moving the car to a call box sitting beside a massive iron gate, he stretched awkwardly through the window to press a faded red button. Its shrill tone cut through the sound of the breeze, too loud and modern for the age of the trees and fence around him. 

After seven long rings, a woman’s voice crackled through the speaker, “Wait at the gate, I’ll be down in a moment.” 

“Is this the fig farm?” His question was absorbed by the wind and the trees and their leaves and no one else. 

He stared into his lap and counted the drops of sweat sliding down his lower back as he waited. After he lost track somewhere in the low thirties, he looked up to find the Farmer on her feet in front of his car next to a beautiful palomino. They stood together like a sculpture, the sun gilding them in a soft golden halo.

She gestured for him to pull forward, guiding her horse to the side of the road and walking around the car to close the gate behind him. The horse’s ears pitched back as the rusty hinges screeched closed. For a fraction of a second, Cameron wondered how he hadn’t heard her open it. 

The Farmer’s figure grew in his side mirror as she approached the window, glaring down at Cameron like a rodent caught in a kitchen. She made an impatient gesture with her head and a rolling motion with her fingers as if to say: Can you please roll your window down, you stupid little boy? 

He scrambled for the button, accidentally rolling down the opposite side before lowering his own. 

The Farmer sank into a hip and leaned her forearms on the window. Her breath filled the car, sickly and warm, reminding him of burning caramel. Cameron tried to lean away from it, staring at her with wide eyes, but there wasn’t enough space in the car. 

The crow’s feet nestled above her cheekbones were as deep as a 90-year-old’s, but the way she moved indicated youth. She wore jeans and a flannel with a cowboy hat. There wasn’t a drop of sweat on her. 

“You made it.” 

“Ah-hello-yeah-ah-I’m here for a girl, yes.” 

“A girl? It’s a soul you’re buying.” Her eyes flashed to the center console, like she knew he’d stashed the rest of the fee there. She leaned back and pounded an open hand against the car’s roof, causing Cameron to jump an inch off his seat. 

The Farmer swept gracefully onto her horse and led the beast up a gradual slope, trotting at a comfortable pace. He wasn’t sure what was considered a polite distance to keep when driving behind a horse, so he left a wide berth. 

He’d expected neat, cultivated rows and was surprised to find the mature fig trees tangled together for miles without end. Their trunks were gnarled and thick, their canopies reaching well over twenty feet into the air. Rolling masses of roots stretched from the earth in a brawl for space and air, disappearing into a darkness that seemed to contract and stretch as he tried to look deeper into the grove. Along the treeline, massive leaves aimed their broad faces at him as he passed, the lightning strikes of their veins visible to him from the car. Heat rippled up his spine, every instinctive alarm ringing under his skin. 

Cameron’s throat dried at the thought of getting lost in it. He reached for the water bottle he’d picked up at a gas station in Fresno and, remembering he’d finished it an hour earlier, swallowed uncomfortably, the dust in the air gritty against his palate. 

The figs grew in size as they moved higher up a large hill. First ping-pong balls, then softballs, then soccer balls. After an impossibly long drive, the road opened up to a wide clearing. Faint music bubbled from an old white farmhouse standing guard over the property. 

Cameron noticed symbols painted onto the faded wood in transparent high gloss, invisible on the shaded wall to the east and glistening faintly on the side illuminated by the setting sun. The characters were composed of sharp, criss-crossing lines. Norse runes? he thought. Or maybe older. He could tell the script was invented for chisels on stone and translated into paint on wood. He was almost certain that it was a language, and could only guess that it had something to do with the Farmer’s crop. 

As they approached, a large barn flanking the house, also covered in those marks, came into view. Cameron grabbed the package in his center console, shoved it into his back pocket, and followed the Farmer into the barn on foot, his heart thrumming in his ears as he searched for and failed to find signs of life in a few low-fenced stalls. 

Without looking at him, her voice padded by mounds of soft hay, she spoke: “A small section of the grove is ripe at any given time; we will open three figs before you decide. The only read you’ll get is through their eyes. Some don’t take well to being picked, so look closely and choose wisely.” 

“How—how does it work? How do they get there?” 

“I don’t have to tell you shit.” 

“But I’m giving you all of my savings,” his voice rose as he spoke. 

“Still don’t mean I have to tell you shit. What are you gonna do, go to the cops?” 

He stood firm and ground his teeth as she approached a wall of tools. The Farmer reached for a curved blade, tucked a bundle of rags and blankets from a nearby cupboard under her arm, and picked a glowing lantern off a hook. As she walked back toward the doors, she stopped in front of Cameron, standing too close again. 

Her blue eyes, matching his in color, held an unusual light. She had eyes like a baby’s, glittering and bright. He tried to take a step back, but she gripped his arm and held him there with impossible strength.

“You must understand that you’re bringing home a mouth to feed. Flesh and blood and hair and saliva and shit and piss and bile. Can you handle that?” 

“I know what I’m here for, I can handle it,” he said with as much bravado as he could muster. “I work from home.” 

The Farmer looked at him like he’d spoken Latin. 

“Alright then. Follow me.” 

She released his arm, handed him the lantern, and led him to the trees behind the farmhouse. All the lights in the home were on, its windows covered by white curtains with at least a half dozen shadowy figures moving throughout. 

He could faintly hear more than one voice singing—which must have been the music he heard when they drove in—and the smell of bread wafted from a kitchen. They reached the tree line, and she walked into the gloom of the canopy. “Keep close, you won’t be able to find your way back.” 

It didn’t take long for them to reach the copse. The medicine ball-sized figs on these trees weighed so heavily on their branches that they touched the ground. The Farmer pulled out her blade and cut three of them down from neighboring trees, stepping back as she did to avoid the incredible snap of the branches shooting up and settling back into place with the newfound relief of the burden. 

The figs were bulging, purple-black, soft. White, milky sap dribbled in thick rivulets from the fresh wound at each tip. Cameron found his arm reaching toward the first fruit she had cut in a motion he hadn’t remembered deciding to make. Rip me open, tear me apart, taste me, taste me, taste me. 

“Don’t touch it,” the Farmer’s voice was soft, almost awestruck, as she stared at the fruit. “The sap will burn you.”

He stepped back while she crouched low in front of the first fig, slicing a shallow cut along its swollen base. He thought of his mother’s C-section scar. Thick, dark pink liquid poured from the incision, that sickly caramel smell in the Farmer’s breath filling the air and choking Cameron. 

He stood unmoving behind her as something thrashed inside the fruit, roiling under its thick flesh, splashing the liquid and sap across the clearing. A large drop of the sap landed on his hand, sending pain searing up his arm as the spot reddened and blistered. He fell to the ground, breathing hard, unable to take his eyes off the unfolding mess. 

The Farmer shoved her hands into the fig, finding purchase on something, and lifted a booted foot to knock the sappy tip away from them. She pulled with incredible strength until a pale foot emerged, her fingers wrapped around the ankle. In a matter of seconds, she’d ripped the rest of the body out with a biological slurping sound. 

Coated in that viscous fluid, the woman flopped onto her stomach in the dirt clearing. She writhed and rolled and took horrible gulps of the humid air, fighting into the world. The Farmer approached her on all fours, saying something quietly. Cameron tried to grasp a single familiar syllable of the language she spoke—and couldn’t. It was a throaty, primal sound, more animal than human. It soothed the woman, who had begun to slow her movements. The Farmer opened her bundle and pulled out a large towel, continuing her low cooing as she crawled toward the shaking figure. She wrapped it gently around the woman and began wiping the goo from her eyes, her hands, her arms. 

The woman’s hair and skin were both fair, almost glowing, like the soft white petals of jimsonweed under moonlight. Her eyes were open wide, their strange light grey irises visible to Cameron even in the lamplight. Large features and a sharp jaw made her striking, and she shrugged out of the towel in the heat of the night, her figure long and lithe. 

The Farmer continued to speak, helping the woman to her feet. Like a newborn deer, she wobbled as she adjusted to the force of gravity on her muscles.

Cameron’s pants tightened uncomfortably as he gazed at her. Her breasts were small, and her waist tapered dramatically before widening at the hips. She seemed to find her footing as she felt his gaze and noticed him sitting there, clinging to his burned hand. She gave the Farmer a look of unease and sprinted into the trees, a wraith in the fading twilight. 

“Shit,” she muttered to herself. “She won’t make it far. I’ll send the girls out tonight.” The Farmer turned toward him. “I wouldn’t recommend a runner.” 

Cameron didn’t know what he was supposed to do. He couldn’t find a word to say, couldn’t move. He tried to count his breaths and found the numbers slipping from his tally after two or three—his only tether to reality the burning sensation that had begun radiating up his arm. 

The Farmer got to work on the second fig, which didn’t thrash at all as she cut into it. The body came pouring out with the preservative liquid. It was very clear, as the mass hit the ground, that it wasn’t alive. 

Cameron searched desperately for human features and found her face, dark eyes staring through the fluid and up at the darkening purple sky. Her limbs were disfigured, ending at the knees and elbows in knotted stumps covered in black mold. The reek of decay folded into the caramel smell hanging in the air. Cameron’s trance lifted as he leaned over to vomit on the fertile soil under his feet. 

“Blight got the tree. You poor thing,” the Farmer said to the corpse before gently laying the soiled towel she had used to dry off the first woman over it. 

The small clearing was covered in the goo from the opened figs, too thick to absorb quickly into the dark earth, and was oozing toward the spot on which Cameron was trying once again to catch his breath. He forced himself to his feet, another wave of nausea churning in his gut, as he stepped onto a tall root of the tree and watched the Farmer approach the third fig. 

She arced her knife across the fruit’s belly with a certainty and tenderness that Cameron could never understand.

The fig woman was alive as she slid easily out of the fruit, moving hesitantly and without the desperation of the first. She rolled to the ground and curled to one side, lying quite still as the Farmer started her work, towelling the sticky coating from any open cavities. 

The woman’s brows pulled together in mild consternation, her breathing keeping a hard, steady pace, but she made no move to flail or run. 

As the Farmer sat her up, the woman glowed in the lantern light. The sun was gone and Cameron stepped carefully around the pool of sludge filling the area. He looked at her and lost his footing, the sole of his shoe hissing in a puddle of sap before he could scramble onto a dry root.

She had darker features than the first woman—golden skin, long, black hair, and eyes that matched the deep green of the fig leaves. After a few more moments drying her off and, in that quiet language, convincing the woman to stand, the Farmer scooped a supportive arm under her shoulder and pulled her gently to her feet. 

The three of them made their way back to the barn, Cameron’s gaze locked on the fig woman as they wound through the grove. Once inside, the Farmer produced a simple nightgown from a pile of laundry in a basket. As soon as the fabric settled on her body, Cameron pulled the envelope from his back pocket and snatched the fig woman’s wrist, the skin of his burned hand stretching painfully as his grip tightened. 

The barn around them shuddered, the wood groaning against a force Cameron couldn’t see. The woman stared down at the point where their skin met with intent curiosity as the Farmer stormed toward them. The crack of the Farmer’s open knuckles on his cheek was muffled, but the blow ripped through Cameron’s skull and down his neck. The fig woman’s wrist slipped from his grasp as he careened backward, unable to get his feet under him as he sprawled on the ground. 

Tears welled in the woman’s eyes, and a childlike wail escaped her mouth. Something heavy and sour bloomed in Cameron’s stomach as he watched her walk into the Farmer’s arms.

“She needs to be taught first; you can’t just walk her out of here. She doesn’t understand what’s happening—let alone who or what you are.” 

“And who and what is she?” 

“She is alive.” 

Cameron clambered to his feet, his mouth opening and closing like a dying fish as he searched for words in vain. 

“That’s what I thought. Now get the fuck out of my way, this is going to take a while.” Cameron turned on his heel and began pacing in front of the barn door while the Farmer sat the woman on a milking stool, crouched in front of her, and began speaking in that language with the utmost gentleness. 

Unsure of what else to do, he replaced the scattered bills in their envelope and walked laps around the barn, catching bits and pieces of what the Farmer said through the walls. At first, she spoke in her language, but switched to English after the first hour or so. It sounded like she was telling stories—religious fables, folktales, myths—most of which he’d never heard before. 

Harsh lights began blinking above him, and, squinting, he realized the symbols painted onto the barn and house were flickering in a pattern he couldn’t make out. This is too much, he thought. It was dark and unnatural and he had made a mistake. He looked at his car, the thought of driving away from this place sending relief through him, savings be damned.

Cameron took a step toward the sedan, then another, a weight lifting from his body with every movement forward. As he reached for the door handle, the air grew thick and heavy and unimaginably still—the way it did before the violent spring lightning storms of his childhood on the outskirts of Tulsa. Static rippled up his spine, sending the fine hairs at his nape on edge. He stumbled backward, away from the dense air that clenched his chest, until he found himself leaned over and panting in the barn, the air inside free of that awful charge.

“Let’s pick you a name,” he heard the Farmer say. “I’ll list as many as I know and you tell me when you hear one you like. Anne, Anna, Annabelle, Anastasia, Ariana,” she kept going through a long list she had clearly memorized when they made it to R, “Rhea.” 

The woman tapped the Farmer’s knee with a forefinger and spoke barely above a whisper, “Like the story—Hades’ mother.”

“Yes, Rhea, that’s very good. Do you like the surname Cirillo? I once knew a man with that very name.” 

“Yes. I like the surname Cirillo.” 

“Rhea Cirillo, welcome to the world,” the Farmer’s face glowed as her cheeks balled up like a child’s, fading immediately as she turned to Cameron.

“She’s yours now,” she extended her hand. Cameron reached to shake it when she pulled it away, “The second payment.” 

He reddened as he pulled the crumpled, torn envelope out of his pocket and gave it to her. She counted the dirty bills and spoke to Rhea once more in their indecipherable language before nudging her outside. The Farmer pointed at the stars, traced an arc down to the ground in front of them, and rested a hand on Rhea’s cheek. After sharing an understanding look, she walked to the farmhouse without looking back and disappeared inside. The symbols on the house were no longer flashing, Cameron realized, but when he looked into the woods beyond it, they glowed dimly in his peripheral vision, like the stamp the last embers of a fire leave on your retinas when you stare into the dark. 

The drive home was quiet. While it was easy enough to get her into the car, Rhea’s spine went rigid when Cameron reached over her to buckle her seatbelt, fumbling as the angry welts on his hand screamed. He tried filling the space with quiet explanations of what he was doing through gritted teeth, but the more he spoke, the stupider he sounded. 

He tried turning the radio on, prompting Rhea to shriek and cover her ears with her palms, and him to launch into another explanation that quickly made him feel remarkably out of his depth. 

Rhea spent most of the drive staring out the window, making Cameron wonder if she could see in the dark. He imagined it would be overwhelming to watch farmland disappear into mountains, enveloping them in complete blackness. When the lights of the outer suburbs of LA began to glow in the distance, she sat up straight, leaning forward to stare through the windshield. The first grid of city lights emerged through the dark and she gasped. 

“What is that?” 

Cameron could feel her gaze turn to his profile in the car, “That is the edge of a city.” 

“Are those houses?” 

“Yes.” 

“There are so many lights…” 

“A lot of people live there.” 

“It’s beautiful.”

The eastern sky began to lighten and the highest clouds became a wash of pink and orange. Cameron listened to Rhea hold her breath as the sun crested the edge of the Santa Monica mountains, bathing the valley before them in gold. Her eyes watered, and his heart swelled as he blurted, “Are you afraid?” 

“Of what?” 

“Of me.” 

“No. You can’t hurt me. Are you afraid of me?” 

“No, I… I’m not alone anymore. We can share it—all of it. That’s all I wanted.” His words hung in the air between them. 

Rhea kept her gaze on him, and she asked, “When will I go back to the farm?” 

“You won’t.” 

She shook her head and smiled, returning her gaze to the dazzling world opening around her. 

“What a strange thing to say.”