Durian

Durian smells like a crime and tastes like a coronation. The durian's great spiked fruit announces itself from a hundred meters — sulfurous, infamous, banned from hotels across Asia — and then, for the brave, delivers custard: rich, complex, unforgettable. "Smells like hell, tastes like heaven," the converts say, and he has heard it in twelve languages. He runs the tasting the way other trees run courts: the skeptic approaches, the skeptic recoils, the skeptic is handed one perfect segment, the skeptic goes quiet. Conversion, every time. The Deep Root, which trades in dark reputations, adores him — the faction's proof that the forbidding exterior is sometimes just packaging. His thorns are honest armor; his flowers bloom at night for the bats. "Judge the fruit," he says, "not the announcement. The announcement is only the smell of me arriving."