Editing Mala (section)

===History===
The girl who was once called Carmella Tandy was not what one could call a social butterfly. Always tall for her age, and cursed with the awkwardness that often comes with such, little Carrie often found herself on the outside looking in. It was not unusual to see her sitting alone under the trees while the other kids amused themselves with whatever amuses kids these days. So it should come as little surprise that, having been teased about the 'haunted' apple orchard upon the occasion of the class's field trip to Shady Acres Farms, Carrie again sat by herself in the orchard, wishing that she didn't have to endure the bus ride home with her classmates. 

Wishing while in a Hedge-dominated orchard is seldom a good idea. 

As just another tree in the orchard, the tree that was the girl watched her classmates board the bus and leave Shady Acres. In time, other classes on field trips came and went; the seasons changed and changed again; families of birds built nests in her where they raised their chicks, who grew and raised chicks of their own; and the tree, who had long since forgotten her name, was content. She could watch people come and go, and none of them bothered her, except during the harvest, and she could live with that. 

In time, the big agribusiness combine down the highway undercut the old farm, and it was repossessed by the county and turned into a park. The old barn and farmhouse were replaced with a fountain and benches, the fields were plowed under to make way for a baseball diamond, but a petition drive managed to save the old orchard by dedicating it as a historical landmark. And so, a lot more people came by the tree, who seemed to remember having had legs at some point (this confused her terribly). 

With more people came more chances to peoplewatch, which pleased the tree. Being so close to the park, she got to see behavior that she'd never been witness to before. Unfortunately, it also meant that she was no longer being properly harvested; either her overripe apples would drop off, or clumsy people would climb her and try to pick them, disturbing her birds. At the worst of times, people would throw things to knock the apples down. This annoyed the tree, who silently grumbled to herself, her leaves rustling in a wind that wasn't there.

This went on for some time, until one warm autumn night when two young people met under her and did something that she'd never seen before. After the noise and sweating was done and they'd put their coverings back on, they went back to the loud metal thing that took them down the road towards the bright end of the sky, much brighter than the night had been when the tree was but a sapling. The tree was quite confused by what she had seen, and inexplicably jealous of the two people, as though she felt that she ought to have been doing just what they had been doing. The tree considered this for a time, and decided to follow them down the road. 

The police never ''did'' manage to figure out how the thieves uprooted and made off with an entire apple tree, much less why they'd picked one at random in the middle of the old orchard.