By Brant LaDorn
It was a bright, sunny day when one of King Alais’ men presented him with a strange, yellow object that had washed up on the shore. Where it floated in from, no one was really sure
"What, I ask, is this?" queried the King.
Sages gathered around him in excitement.
"An organ from a monster of the sea," said one.
"A droplet of pure mana from Kaelum," said another.
"A condensation of the stone sulphur," said another. "Quite the rare alchemical phenomenon, my liege."
"Let’s have a look," said the last.
The King handed the object over, and for some time the sage rolled it about in his hands, smelling it and peering at it this way and that.
"I think," he said at last, "that it is a fruit, my King."
"Oh good," said King Alais. "I was just getting hungry."
Very carefully, the King’s head cook sliced the fruit in half.
"Oh, it’s so pretty!" exclaimed Queen Anabelle, who was sitting nearby.
"I shall eat the first piece," said the King, quite ignoring his wife.
A thin slice of the fruit was handed to the King, and he ceremonially set it on his tongue.
All those gathered watched in anticipation. First the King’s eyebrows shot upward. Then his face scrunched up into a terrible scowl. And then, to everyone’s great relief, he broke into a wide grin.
"I’ve found my favorite fruit," he declared.
Criers were sent throughout the Kingdom, declaring that a new fruit had been discovered, and that the King was enjoying it to the utmost. (At that time it was dubbed ‘King Alais’ Fruit of Golden Bliss’ – it was only after Moraithe was discovered that we began calling it a ‘lemon’.) Of course, they also announced that no one else in the Kingdom would ever taste it, since there was only one.
This fact, of course, greatly disturbed the good King Alais, who consulted his head cook.
"To avoid hanging," the King suggested, "I would recommend that you extend my enjoyment of this treasure. See what you can do."
Sweating, the head cook carefully divided the lemon into six sections. One he cut into small pieces and coated with a preparation of honey to create candies for the King. One he soaked in a flavourless alcohol to make a liquor for the King. The third he made into a tiny cake, the fourth into a tart, and the fifth into a preserve. And he fed the King one of these treats each day for five days.
The sixth and last section the head cook carefully kept wrapped in moistened cloth, spending an hour every day at the painstaking task of scraping away the white mold that was forming on the surface. And on the sixth day, when the King thought his lemon was gone forever, the head cook presented His Majesty with the final slice of lemon. This so greatly pleased the King that it no doubt preserved the head cook from a hanging.
"The fruit was extremely versatile," said the head cook. "The only thing I couldn’t find a use for were the seeds."
The King’s eyes brightened. "Seeds?"
"Yes, my King."
King Alais smiled. "Then I’ll have more of my fruit yet."
Twelve seeds had been recovered from the fruit’s interior, and King Alais charged twelve of the Kingdom’s most skilled gardeners to grow the plant and provide him with more fruit. Knowing their lives were at stake, each of them poured all their considerable skills into making the seeds grow. And soon enough, twelve little lemon-trees were poking from the soil. All the gardeners were hopeful -- until winter came. As the cold seeped between the cracks in doors and windows, eleven little lemon trees wilted and died. And eleven gardeners dangled from the noose.
Only one managed to keep her ‘Golden Bliss’ alive. Realizing that the cold was lethal, she surrounded the little tree in a tiny room of glass and kept it always in the sun. Still, the cold nights chilled the plant, and it began to look quite ill.
Panicked, she took her dilemma to the King himself.
"You," he said, "are my last hope, dear gardener. Whatever you ask is at your disposal."
She disclosed to him her plan for making the lemon-tree grow, and soon enough, atop the castle (so it would get as much sun as possible), she had built the first greenhouse – a glass room within a glass room, with six servants sitting and sleeping inside each section so that the whole affair would stay warm. And in the center of this was a small golden stool with a pot perched atop. And from that pot, the happy little lemon-tree grew.
It was a true success. Over many, many moons the tree grew, and the King visited anxiously each day to look at the progress. At last, the tree grew large enough to sprout flowers. It wasn’t long afterward when tiny lemons appeared.
Criers were sent throughout the Kingdom, announcing that the King would soon enjoy more of the fruits he had so taken a liking to.
And then the storm came.
The bolt of lightning that struck the castle that night must have been of tremendous potency, for the glass greenhouse was all shattered and melted, the poor servants strewn about in disarray, and the precious, precious, lemon tree was naught but a scorched and twisted stick.
The gardener managed to flee for her life as soon as she heard the news, but as for lemons, another wasn’t seen in Masalla for the next two hundred and eighty years.