Opening Lines: Apple Tree

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To help celebrate Sheila’s launch of Golden Delicious, we’re offering an evocative picture and invite you to join us in writing an opening line or two for the story it depicts. (A version of the picture originally from maliving.com.)

appleorchardEdith: After he reassembled the pile of stones, he heard a cracking sound. He peered into the woods across the road but saw no one. He scattered some of the apples from the basket, blew a kiss to his now-dead wife, and drove away. He’d eaten enough locally grown apples for a lifetime, thank you very much.

Liz: Her back was only turned for a split second, but when she looked back, Josie was gone. All that was left was her basket on the ground, deep red apples spilling out of it like blood.

Sherry: She waited crouched behind the stone wall for someone to come for the basket of apples.

Jessie: She’d been called a lot  of things over the years; Evil Queen, Wicked Stepmother, Fairest in the Land but never Farm Hand. Just thinking about how low Snow White had forced her to stoop brought on a blinding rage. Perhaps that’s why she failed to notice the short little men creeping up behind her with rocks held aloft in their work-worn hands.

Julie: She was there one minute, picking apples, minding her own business. Next thing she knew, a beam of light appeared, and she was zapped to another dimension. Where the apples were pears. And the grass was yellow, as was the sky. And she saw herself, an hour ago, entering the orchard.

Readers: What’s your opening line?

Published by Edith Maxwell

Agatha Award -winning author Edith Maxwell writes the historical Quaker Midwife Mysteries (Beyond the Page) and short crime fiction. As Maddie Day she writes the Country Store Mysteries series, the Cozy Capers Book Group Mysteries, and the Cece Barton Mysteries (all from Kensington Publishing). She lives north of Boston in an antique house with her beau and cat Martin, where she writes, gardens, cooks, and wastes time on Facebook.

12 Thoughts

  1. Her apples artfully scattered as if in haste, she scurried up the tree until well hidden by bright leaves of green, red, and yellow. Poised for action, she waited for the thief who’d been robbing her of the best pickings from her favorite apple tree.

  2. I just love visiting this tree when the apples are ready. It looks so lovely. No one but me knows about the body buried beneath it.

  4. Eve loved to walk the country roads in autumn, especially here by the old orchard where the air tasted of fermenting cider. When she spied the tumbled basket, she moved toward it, tempted. Until she saw the sulfur yellow apple that screamed of danger.

  5. There was little food in their larder, so when Grendel came upon the dropped basket, its precious cargo strewn careless about the hillside and his darling Liesel no where in sight, a chill crept up his spine. The monster, the one they thought had moved on, must have returned.

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