Journey Through Genres: Comedy

It's tough being the sister of someone famous.

          The sun, a brazen show-off in the Mid-Atlantic sky, beat down on the dusty road, making the air shimmer like a bad watercolor. But for Irma Regina Appleseed, the glare was just another blur in a world already smudged at the edges. She squinted, her nose practically touching the parchment in her hand, trying to decipher the latest deluge of fan mail her brother had received. Johnny, her elder by a respectable handful of years, had, it seemed, single-handedly painted the entire frontier green. And now, everyone wanted a piece of the Appleseed legacy.
          Except Irma. Irma wanted no part of it.
          "Another one, Irma!" exclaimed Mrs. Higgins, whose apron was perpetually dusted with flour. "This one's from Ohio! Asks if you, being Johnny's own flesh and blood, could offer any tips on perfecting the 'Johnny Appleseed Special Apple Fritter.'"
          Irma grimaced, a familiar spasm of revulsion twitching her features. She felt a prickle begin on her neck, a familiar herald of impending doom - or, more accurately, an allergic reaction. Apples. She hated them. The sight, the smell, the very word sent shivers down her spine, followed quickly by hives and a dramatic swelling of her lower lip. It was an irony the universe seemed to relish, a cosmic joke played on the sister of the nation's most celebrated pomologist.
          "I'm sure they'd be delicious, Mrs. Higgins," Irma said, forcing a smile that felt tight, like a corset laced too high. "Provided, of course, one enjoys apples." She held up the letter. "And this one wants to know if I possess Johnny's uncanny ability to charm stubborn saplings into submission. Like I'm some horticultural whisperer."
          Mrs. Higgins chuckled, kneading a lump of dough the size of a small dog. "Well, dear, what do you do? Surely, with all that Appleseed blood, you must have some talent for the land, for growing things, for... apples?"
          Irma, her nearsighted eyes widening behind her spectacles, managed to trip over her own feet backing away, nearly upending a barrel of dubious-looking turnips. "Oh, I have talents, Mrs. Higgins, indeed I do! Just not... apple talents."
          Her talents, she mused, were of a distinctly different, and far more secretive, sort. Irma Regina Appleseed wanted to be a Witch. Not the cackling, hag-ridden, evil spell-casting kind, mind you. Oh no. Irma envisioned herself as a good witch, a healer, a gentle steward of nature's hidden bounties. She dreamt of concocting soothing tinctures from forgotten herbs, of whispering health into ailing bodies, of dancing, wild and free, under the benevolent gaze of the full moon--regular witch things, you know.
          The problem, beyond the apple-shaped shadow of her brother, was Irma herself. She was, as previously noted, catastrophically clumsy. Her nearsightedness was legendary; she once tried to milk a surprised goat using a watering can. And her "sixth sense," that uncanny ability to predict when something was going to happen, always kicked in precisely after the event had conclusively concluded.
          "I just knew that barrel was going to topple," she muttered to Mrs. Higgins, who was now expertly scooping spilled turnips back into their container. "I had a feeling it would happen. Right after it, you know, happened."
          The villagers, blessing their earnest but misguided hearts, were relentless. Following Johnny's meteoric rise to fame, Irma had become a curious attraction, a living footnote. People would travel miles, not to see her, but to see the sister of Johnny Appleseed. And invariably, the conversation would swerve, like a runaway cart on a bumpy road, back to apples.
          A young woman, dewy-eyed and eager, presented Irma with a sapling, genuflecting. "Oh, Miss Appleseed, could you impart to me the secrets of planting? Do you speak to the seeds, perhaps? Whisper promises of fruitful bounty?"
          Irma, in her haste to politely decline, tripped over the sapling itself, sending it flying into a puddle of stagnant rainwater before landing ungracefully in a patch of nettles. "I had a feeling that was going to happen," she announced, picking nettles from her skirt, her "sixth sense" as punctual as ever. "Right before I went head-over-heels."
          Her secret witchy life, therefore, was conducted with the utmost stealth and a commendable amount of personal injury. Her "herb garden" was a chaotic patch behind her small cottage, a testament to her adventurous (and often mistaken) identification skills. She'd tried to cultivate mandrake, convinced it would give her powerful insights, only to realize (after much digging and a few sprained wrists) she'd actually been nurturing a particularly stubborn burdock weed.
          Her attempts at healing were equally... unique. One afternoon, finding a stray cat limping with a swollen paw, Irma, with the purest intentions, decided to brew a restorative poultice. She consulted her worn, hand-me-down grimoire - a dusty old thing she'd found in a forgotten trunk, a cast-off recipe book disguised as something mystical. Following the instructions for "a salve for aching joints," she diligently gathered what she believed were moonwort, borage, and comfrey. In reality, she'd collected dandelions, a particularly aggressive patch of poison ivy, and what she later identified as her neighbor's prize-winning petunias.
          She mixed them in a chipped porcelain bowl, humming a tuneless incantation she'd improvised. The resulting goo was an alarming shade of puce and smelled faintly of vinegar and regret. As she knelt, nearsighted and earnest, to apply it to the cat, she misjudged the distance, smearing half the concoction onto her own cheek and the other half onto the cat's tail. The cat, understandably alarmed by this sudden assault of purplish-green slime, let out a yowl, and bolted, inadvertently knocking over a precarious stack of kindling, which then tumbled onto Irma's head.
          "I knew that was going to happen," Irma sighed, rubbing a new lump on her forehead. "Right after I put that... substance... on the cat."
          Despite the mishap, the cat was seen the next day, not only walking without a limp but exhibiting a glossy, almost iridescent, sheen to its tail. And Irma's cheek, where the puce poultice had landed, was remarkably clear of a persistent blemish she'd been battling for weeks. A happy accident or a sign that her clumsy magic had a will of its own.
          Her moon dances were legendary, for all the wrong reasons. Under the silvery glow, Irma would shed her cumbersome day clothes, her slender frame illuminated only by the celestial light. She'd raise her arms, imagining ancient energies flowing through her, only to inevitably pivot too sharply and stumble over an unseen root, or misjudge the depth of a shadow and land in a patch of particularly ticklish clover. Her neighbors, who occasionally glimpsed her flailing silhouette through their windows, put it down to "Miss Appleseed's nightly constitutional," a quaint eccentricity. They never connected it to "witchcraft."
          One crisp autumn evening, a messenger arrived with an urgent message from a neighboring village. A terrible blight had swept through their fields, turning crops into dust and leaving the villagers in despair. "They say," the messenger, a nervous young man named Silas, stammered, "they say only an Appleseed can help. They're hoping for your brother, of course, but he's off further west. So, they sent for you, Miss Appleseed."
          Irma felt an internal shudder. This was it. The decisive moment. They wanted an Apple solution. "And what crops are affected, Silas?" she asked, her voice tinged with dread.
          "Oh, mostly the wheat, ma'am. And the... the apple orchards, too."
          Irma fainted. Apples. Of course. Her sixth sense screamed, I knew this was going to happen! A beat later, she added, Right after they asked me about the apples.
          "Well," Irma said, her optimism, resilient as a dandelion, refusing to be dimmed. "I suppose I must go. But if anyone tries to offer me an apple, Silas, I cannot be held responsible for my subsequent actions. Or lack thereof. Or swelling."
          The journey to Willow Creek was a comedy of errors. Irma, trying to appear dignified and witch-like, managed to lose her spectacles twice, trip over her own cloak, and mistake a huge badger for a mystical forest guide. Silas, who had started the journey with a respectable deference, ended it with a look of bewildered admiration for Irma's sheer ability to remain cheerful despite constant self-inflicted chaos.
          Upon arrival, the scene was indeed dire. Fields of green wheat lay brown and withered. The apple trees, usually laden with rosy fruit, were barren, their leaves crinkling like old parchment. The villagers, gaunt and worried, gathered around Irma, their expectations palpable.
          "Miss Appleseed," the village elder began, "we hoped you might have some of your brother's wisdom. A special song for the soil? A chant for the trees?"
          "Well," she announced, standing up, a determined (if slightly lopsided) expression on her face. "I don't have any special songs for apples, but I do have a rather, shall we say, enthusiastic relationship with certain weeds."
          The villagers exchanged confused glances.
          "And," Irma continued, pulling a small, battered leather pouch from her pocket, "I've been experimenting with certain... infusions. For... stubborn ailments." She eyed the withered apple trees. "And I believe I detect a very stubborn ailment indeed."
          Over the next few days, Irma Appleseed did not plant a single apple seed. She did not bake apple pies. She did not make applesauce, not even for herself to avoid. Instead, she wandered the blighted fields, her nearsighted eyes scrutinizing every wilting leaf, every patch of sickly soil. She collected handfuls of dandelions, clover, and a particularly persistent strain of nettle. She muttered to herself, occasionally tripping over roots, but always with a cheerful mind.
          She brewed foul-smelling concoctions in the most enormous cauldron the village possessed. This process involved much stirring with a crooked stick and several near disasters involving spilled liquids and singed eyebrows. Her "healing poultices" were smeared on the base of the apple trees, not with precision, but with a generous, if haphazard, enthusiasm. She danced under the moon, not naked, but in her worn nightgown, her movements still clumsy, but imbued with a fierce, quiet purpose. She almost fell into the well twice during these moonlit rituals.
          "I knew I was going to almost fall in the well," she declared to a startled owl. "Right before I nearly did."
          The villagers watched, bewildered. Some thought her mad. Others, desperate, held onto a glimmer of hope. They kept their distance, especially after she accidentally spilled a particularly pungent mixture on the village elder's prized pet chicken, which subsequently laid eggs of a truly magnificent, shimmering blue.
          Slowly, miraculously, impossibly, things began to change. The wheat, though not entirely saved, showed new, tentative green shoots. The apple trees, while still barren of fruit for the season, began to unfurl fresh, vibrant leaves. And everywhere Irma had spilled her concoctions, strange, new plants started to sprout - not apples, not wheat, but an abundance of hardy, resilient herbs, and wildflowers, bursting with life.
          Irma, standing amidst her burgeoning patch of accidental herbs and wildflowers, smiled. She hadn't intentionally healed the blight, not directly; she imagined a good witch would. But she had, in her own unique fashion, helped. She had cultivated life, created medicine (even if accidental), and danced under the moon with the joyous abandon of a woman finally finding her own rhythm.
          She never did become known as the "Apple Pie Witch" or the "Applesauce Sorceress." Instead, whispers began to spread about the "Curious Plant Lady of Willow Creek," the one whose strange, often messy methods yielded surprisingly beneficial, albeit unpredictable, results. People came to her not for apples, but for her oddly effective dandelion tinctures, her inadvertently vibrant flower arrangements, and her utterly charming, if always belated, predictions.
          Irma Regina Appleseed, Johnny's younger sister, was not very fond of her older brother. But she had, at last, truly grown into her own. And oddly, wonderfully, deliciously, not an apple was in sight.



Contest: Journey Through Genres: Official Contest
Contest Prompt: Comedy
Word Count: 1977