Delicious

            In the township of Cranston, grows a certain type of tree that is known worldwide for it’s fruit. The trees produce a certain kind of fruit that can not be found anywhere else in this reality and travelers come from miles away just for a taste of this fruit. The town’s very economic foundation is based upon the harvesting and exporting of this fruit called Pell. It is relatively round, has a pleasing bright, red color, and is best eaten when ripe and juicy. Many are the different recipes that have grown up around this fruit and there are some who say that it has curative and restorative powers.

            For all that culinary delight, no one in Cranston can eat the fruit without dying.

            It is not a story that many know and no one in Cranston will admit to it but just try and catch a native eating the fruit or one of the many pastries made from it. The farmer’s stalls are mobbed, but by strangers and dealers and tourists. Not by natives. Even the youngest among them are taught from an early age not to eat the fruit.

            The story actually goes back longer than anyone can remember back to the times when myths roamed the lands and amused themselves by meddling in the lives of men. So it was that one day, the king of mischief who had gone by many names like Loki, Puck, and others, came to Cranston. He had it in his mind to play a game with the people of Cranston and found them to be willing participants. Within days, he had half of the township so enraged that they were willing to murder the other half. Which did not happen... with one exception.

            Within the heart of a young couple, the God of Mischief had placed deceit and the blackness of suspicion. The young man, Kleine, had suspected his beautiful, young love, Combe, or laying with another while he worked and grew their farm. In truth, she had done nothing but, all day, Kleine was goaded by the Mischief King into thinking wicked misdeeds of his love until it came to the point where he was positive that she was betraying him with his best friend, Magor. So he resolved to kill them both.

            Taking some of the best and ripest of his fruit, Kleine made of them a most delicious and irresistible pastry, mixed with a deadly poison give to him by the Mischief King. Of this, he brought a piece to Magor who, out of friendship happily ate the dessert and promptly expired in great agony. Kleine felt no regret at this for his friend had obviously felt no regret at stealing Combe’s heart. The death of Magor was quickly discovered but no one could understand how he died for he was a young man in the prime of his life with nothing wrong with him. Only Combe suspected when she heard that a piece of Pell fruit was found near the body so when Kleine, who had never shown interest in baking, brought her the Pell pastry, she knew it for what it was.

            She made no sign to Kleine that she knew about the pastry and that her heart was breaking at the implications of Magor’s death. She sobbed quietly and ate the pastry. Taking to her bed, she died during the night. Found near the body was a note that said, “I was never untrue.”

            Merrily, the Lord of Mischief went on his way, looking for new towns and new bedevilments but, in Cranston, there remained only guilt and pain. From that time forward, no one in the town could eat the Pell fruit without feeling Combe’s pain and heartbreak and death. As for Kleine, it was said that he spent the remainder of his days traveling the world seeking out the Mischief King to exact his revenge and, oh, how that Lord of Lies had his enjoyment with the mortal as he tortured and teased him and eventually allowed him to die some 200 years later.

            But in Cranston, no one can eat the Pell fruit and live but I have heard that it makes a most excellent pie.