The Enchanted Garden
Long ago, there was an enchanted garden. It was the most magnificent place on earth. The sunlight sparked like diamonds as it softly caressed a gentle stream. It reflected the most amazing light that filled the entire garden from beginning to end. The most incredible colors, sweetest fragrances, and lovely sounds were in this garden.
In this wondrous garden lived two children, Benjamin and Eric. They lived together in complete harmony with all the animals, trees, and plants. The children had everything that anyone could ever want and all their days were simply perfect. If they were hungry, all the plants and trees would provide fruits and vegetables for them to eat, and everything tasted wonderful and sweet.
The garden was created especially for the children, to provide them with everything they needed to be happy. But the children did not realize how wonderful their lives were, since they had always lived in the garden and knew only this way of life.
One day, a new tree appeared in the garden. It was an unusual looking tree and it grew a strange-looking fruit. The children were curious, so they decided to investigate. Suddenly a monkey came swinging by on a tree branch, warning the children to be careful.
“Be careful of what?” demanded Benjamin.
“Do not eat this fruit,” answered the monkey. “Something bad will …..”
But before the monkey could finish his sentence, Eric picked a fruit off the tree and took a bite.
“Mmmm…this is too delicious to share,” said Eric.
“I want some, too,” insisted Benjamin as he picked a fruit off the tree and ate it.
Suddenly, a dark cloud covered the garden. At the same moment, the children looked at each other and announced that they no longer wanted to share the garden.
“This will be my side of the garden,” said Eric. “You can go and live on the other side.”
“That’s not fair!” complained Benjamin. “You chose the side with the amazingly sweet fruit!”
The monkey just looked at them and laughed. “You are right. The fruit is amazing, but it’s not the taste that makes it amazing. It’s the magic inside,” the monkey said.
“I want the magic!” exclaimed Benjamin.
“No! I want it!” insisted Eric.
“The fruit has magic seeds inside,” the monkey explained. “The seeds reveal your true nature. Now that you ate them, you will only care about yourselves and not about your friend. Look around and see how the garden has changed. You must work together to repair the divided garden, and you must do it with love.”
The children looked at the monkey and laughed.
“The only thing better than living in this garden is not sharing it!” Eric exclaimed.
So it was that the children continued to bicker. In fact, the only thing that they agreed about was where to draw a line dividing the garden into two separate places: right down the middle of the amazingly sweet fruit tree!
That night, the children discovered something shocking. All the fruits and vegetables that they ordinarily loved to eat now tasted bitter! Unlike before, the amazingly sweet fruit was the only fruit that still tasted sweet. How could this be happening? The garden had always taken very good care of them. Both children spit out the bitter fruit and went to bed hungry for the first time.
Benjamin closed his eyes and fell asleep. But Eric stayed awake, worrying about the bitter fruits and vegetables. He decided to gather all the sweet fruits and hide them while Benjamin was sleeping. This way, he would have all of them for himself.
The next morning when Benjamin went to pick a sweet fruit from the tree, he discovered that they were all gone!
“Where did the amazing fruits go?” he thought. “Eric must have taken all of them!”
He looked all over the garden for Eric, but he couldn’t find him. Since he was very hungry, he had no choice but to eat some of the bitter fruit. As he bit into the bitter fruit, he got a sharp pain in his side and decided that he would rather go hungry.
Finally, Benjamin was so hungry that he decided to trick Eric into sharing the sweet fruit. He lay down and pretended to be sick. Eric saw his “sick” friend from his hiding place on the other side of the garden and it made him very sad. He walked over to Benjamin and sat next to him.
“You are hungry, right?” he asked Benjamin in a very soft voice.
Benjamin nodded. “I need something to eat, but I can’t eat the bitter fruit; it hurts my stomach to eat it,” he replied.
Eric realized how selfish he had been, keeping all of the fruits to himself. He suddenly remembered how much fun he used to have playing in the enchanted garden with Benjamin, but now he didn’t know if they would ever play together again. Eric’s eyes filled with tears, and he quickly ran to his hiding place to bring the sweet fruit to Benjamin.
“Here,” he said feeling ashamed. “You can have all the sweet fruits you want. Now I see how selfish I was, keeping them all to myself! The monkey was right, I didn’t think about my friend! I would give anything to be back in the enchanted garden with you, the way we used to live.”
A look of surprise appeared on Benjamin’s face. Now he, too, felt ashamed.
“You may have taken the fruit,” he said, “but I tricked you, too... I am not really sick, just hungry. I tricked you into sharing with me! The monkey was right. The fruit did show us our true natures.”
“The garden used to take care of us,” Eric said. “We had everything we could ever want, but we didn’t appreciate it because we were only trying to satisfy ourselves. The magic seeds spoiled everything!”
“Even the sweet fruit!” Benjamin agreed.
Both children stared down at the sweet fruit and discovered that it was starting to rot. Suddenly, Benjamin remembered….
“The monkey said that we must work together to repair the garden!”
“Yes, and we must do it with love!” smiled Eric.
The children decided to work together. Eric squeezed juice out of the sweet fruits and used it to sweeten the bitter fruits and vegetables. It was incredible how it took only a few sprinkles of the juice to add a wonderful flavor to all the other fruits and vegetables! Benjamin planted all of the fruits that had rotted in the ground, and watered them every day.
It wasn’t long before the entire garden was filled with an orchard of amazing fruit trees. But fruit trees were not the only thing that grew in the garden; the friendship and love between the children grew so strong that its strength was even more powerful than the magic seeds.
One day, as they were sharing a piece of the amazing fruit together, a miracle had happened: The clouds disappeared from the sky and the sun began to shine again. The children looked up and saw a sky as blue as the ocean. They realized that they were actually back in their beloved garden!
Now, the garden was even better than before, and all the fruits and vegetables were even more delicious. Benjamin stood up and picked a berry. It was the sweetest berry he had ever tasted! All the fruits and vegetables were more delicious than the children could ever have imagined.
From that day on, Eric and Benjamin enjoyed living in the enchanted garden together and eating its fruits. They realized that their friendship was more powerful than the magic seeds. And because of their friendship, the garden would remain perfect forever.
