Page 7 of Pumpkin Spiced Orc
She sees. Of course she does.
“You’re glowing.”
“It does that when the orchard stirs.”
“Why you?” she asks again, like it’s the only question that matters. “Why did it pick you?”
“I stayed when no one else would.”
She doesn’t reply right away. Just steps forward, close enough that I can smell her—lavender and old paper, sweat and something earthy. She reaches out, fingers hovering just shy of the wood I’m shaping.
“And if it chose me too?”
I meet her eyes. “Then the orchard’s about to wake up for real.”
CHAPTER 5
IVY
If the orchard breathes, then the Root Cellar wheezes.
The little shop has always smelled like herbs left too long in a mason jar and regret baked into pie crusts. Every time I walk inside, I half expect to find frog bones in the floorboards or a spellbook with attitude slapping closed on its own. Lettie Embervein stands behind the counter, a pair of amber reading glasses perched halfway down her nose and a teacup in her hand that’s probably older than I am. Halka’s in the back room, humming something vaguely threatening while the scent of burnt cinnamon drifts u...
I’m seated on a stool that wobbles every time I shift and doing my best not to let my expression slip into open disbelief as Lettie gestures toward a crudely drawn orchard map that somehow pulses faintly when you look too long at the roots.
“Don’t roll your eyes at me, sweetheart,” Lettie says, slapping a bony hand on the table. “Your mother would’ve smacked you twice already and called it a lesson.”
“She also thought bees could predict heartbreak,” I mutter, leaning back. “Forgive me if I’m not buying the idea that the orchard is some kind of sentient moss monster.”
“It’s not a monster,” Halka calls from the back. “It’s old magic. Sacred. Blood-fed.”
That doesn’t make it better.
I sigh and fold my arms. “All I’m saying is—trees don’t talk. I hear wind. I hear rustling. That’s not the land trying to gossip with me. It’s physics.”
Lettie squints at me like she’s trying to decide if I’m possessed or just dense. “It’s been waking up since the moment you stepped foot in town. You think that’s coincidence? Your father held the orchard at bay with sheer stubbornness and rootwork. Now it’s your turn, like it or not.”
“I don’t.”
“Then you best run fast, girl,” she mutters. “Because it’s not letting go easy.”
I leave the Root Cellar with the faint taste of something acrid on my tongue—tea, maybe, or fear. The elders mean well, I guess. But they speak in riddles and roots, and I don’t have the patience for parables. I want concrete. I want certainty. I want a world where trees don’t whisper in the dark and the air doesn’t feel like it’s trying to climb inside your skin.
The orchard stretches quiet and gold as I walk through it, light pouring through branches that look almost too still. It’s warm today, warmer than it should be for late autumn, and everything smells like apples and dying things.
Garruk’s waiting by the edge of the creek, shirt rolled up, working a felled log like it insulted his ancestors. His axe rises and falls with deliberate rhythm, each thunk echoing through the woods.
“Hey, Thorne,” I call, trying for casual.
He doesn’t look up. “You smell like regret and rosemary.”
“Thanks. I’m bottling it for fall.”
The axe stills. He glances over his shoulder, and something flickers in his expression. Annoyance. Worry. Maybe a little bit of that slow-burn fire he keeps locked behind his teeth.
“What’d the witches say?” he asks.
“That I’m the Chosen One and should probably marry a tree.”
