Page 16 of Pumpkin Spiced Orc
The orchard looms around me—branches arching overhead, heavy with shadow and strange rustling sounds that might just be squirrels or might be the land whispering again. I trail my fingers along a low branch and feel it twitch, ever so slightly, like it recognizes me.
That’s not comforting.
I don’t mean to end up at the root cellar. But I do.
The door groans like it’s been waiting for me. The stairs creak underfoot, and the air is thick—earthy, laced with the scent of mildew and lavender. I flick on the single overhead bulb. It hums but stays lit.
There’s dust on everything. Dust, cobwebs, old jars of herbs that have long since turned to brittle shadows of themselves. But tucked behind a row of chipped stone crocks is something else.
Wrapped in faded fabric and tied with a strip of leather is a journal.
It smells like her.
I unwrap it with fingers that tremble more than I’d like to admit. The cover is soft with age. When I open it, the first page has a pressed blossom—apple, delicate and browned. Beneath it is ink. Familiar, looping ink.
“You’ll know when the trees call you home.”
I sink down onto the cool stone floor, breath caught behind my ribs. The pages speak in my mother’s voice—about the land, the orchard, the pull she felt even when she tried to fight it. She talks about breath-stones and memory vines and how the trees remember what we bury beneath them.
“The orchard listens,” she wrote. “It hears the promises we make and the ones we break. It’s older than us, but it still chooses.”
I don’t realize I’m crying until the ink blurs.
When I finally stand, the journal pressed to my chest, I swear the wind says my name.
And this time, I don’t deny it.
CHAPTER 10
GARRUK
Ihear it first in the hush of early evening—two voices drifting from the west porch. The cadence of Ivy’s voice always smells like storm and cigarette smoke, and Brody’s all bass and brute confidence. I don’t intend to listen. I’m chopping wood near the eastern grove, trying to keep my hands busy so the memory of last night’s dream doesn’t claw back to the surface. But then Ivy says my name, and Brody answers—with enough barb in his tone that I can’t pretend they’re talking about anything else.
“You’re not staying because of him,” Brody says, voice low but sharp, “or because you’re too stubborn to leave. You’re staying because he’s here.”
I pause, my axe poised mid-swing. Blood echoes in my veins. Does she believe it?
“I don’t know what you think you’re doing,” Ivy says, “but Garruk took care of this place before I got here. Keeps it breathing. Keeps it safe.”
Brody scoffs. “You defending a giant orc now?”
She laughs, tone dry and cutting. “Yes, Brody. I’m defending a giant orc because he’s the only one who hasn’t tried to sell me over a whittling tool set.”
I set the axe down hard, the blade sliding into the log with a thunk. Wood chips skitter across the dirt.
Then Brody says it: “She talks about him like he’s a story, Garruk—not a person.”
My breath catches. And when Ivy says, “Because he’s the only man I’ve ever met who knows how to keep secrets, and the orchard listens to him,” something unravels inside me. Because for once she’s not mocking me. Not pretending I’m a myth. She sees me.
I stalk toward the shadows of the orchard path between trees knotted thick with age and root. Twilight glow filters through leaves that seem to lean in, hearing us. The air hums faintly.
I enter the clearing softly, and Ivy spins around, startled.
“You’re here,” she says.
We stare at each other. She’s soaked in late-day gold and shadow, blouse damp with sweat from hauling something heavy. Her eyes are clear, steady.
“Why?” she asks. Short word, but weighty.
