Page 20 of Pumpkin Spiced Orc

GARRUK

T he orchard sounds different without her.

It doesn’t sing anymore. Doesn’t hum or whisper or sigh.

The wind catches in the branches like it’s confused, unsure where to go now that the one it listened for has left.

Even the birds avoid it. The stillness has weight, like someone draped a wet quilt across the whole place and forgot to take it off.

I used to find comfort in that quiet. Solitude was a balm when the world pressed in too loud and too fast. But now, it just feels hollow.

I haven’t touched the main house since Ivy left. I sleep in the barn again, like I did before she ever came back—hard floor, stiff blanket, no fire. There’s no point pretending I belong in that house without her in it. Every room echoes like a memory I didn’t earn.

The worst part is how the orchard feels her absence. It’s not just sad—it’s sick.

The leaves started curling the second day.

First subtle, like they were cringing from the sun, then more desperate—drooping, crisping, falling out of season.

The ground’s gone brittle in places, and too wet in others, like it’s confused about what to be without her.

I’ve tried everything—mulch, chant, moonwater, even one of Lettie’s awful concoctions that smelled like pickled regret.

Nothing helps. Because it’s not the soil that’s wrong.

It’s the missing heart at the center of it all.

She was that. Is that.

And now she’s gone.

There are moments when I catch myself reaching for her.

Like when I finish pruning a row and glance back, expecting to see her leaning on the gate with that half-smile she wore when she was trying not to laugh at me.

Or when I pass the kitchen window and imagine her inside, hair pulled up, sleeves rolled, cursing softly at the state of the stove.

My hands twitch. My chest aches. And every damn time, I remember—too late—that the space she filled is now just that. A space.

I spend the mornings carving.

It started as a distraction—cutting down storm limbs, shaping new fence posts. Then I found myself back at the old ash tree by the barn, blade in hand, and her name just… came out. Not loud. Not weeping. Just carved. Steady.

“Ivy,” I whispered as I etched the curves. “You stubborn, luminous thing.”

One name turned into two. Then into a sentence. A full thought, honest and raw: You were the only place I ever wanted to grow old.

By the third day, the tree was covered in them.

I don’t know what I’m trying to do—summon her, maybe. Bind myself to the ache just so I don’t forget how sharp it is. The bark drinks my thoughts like water. And I give them freely, knowing she’ll never read them.

The town elders came by this morning.

All three of them, robes flapping, faces pinched.

They stood outside the orchard’s boundary line, afraid to cross, like the land might bite.

One of them—a wiry woman with more nerve than sense—shouted something about “destabilized ley lines” and “covenant fracture.” I didn’t answer.

What would I say? Yes, the orchard is bleeding and it's my fault and also hers and also nobody's because love is a goddamned wild thing that doesn’t follow our rules?

Instead, I turned my back and walked into the trees.

The orchard has always shifted when it’s in pain. The last time was when Ivy’s father died. The land buckled. The stones cracked. I remember holding the perimeter with my bare hands and gritted teeth while the sky opened like it wanted to swallow the whole damn valley.

This feels worse.

The sky’s been brewing all afternoon. Clouds too low, too green, fat with something more than rain. The air tastes metallic, sharp at the edges, and the wind keeps changing direction like it doesn’t trust itself.

I know what’s coming.

I’ve known since she left.

The orchard needs an anchor. And the bond it’s tied to is unraveling.

Blood magic is ancient. It predates the glyphs and the covenants and even the orchards themselves. It’s not evil. Just wild. Demanding. A last resort for land that’s losing itself.

And right now, I can feel the center pulling.

The call isn’t in words—it’s in pulse, thrum, bone-deep ache. It drags at me, tugs at the line between shoulder and spine where the oldest glyph lives. The one I carved myself, without instruction. The one that links me to the orchard’s root system like I’m a damn sapling.

So I go.

I don’t take my coat. I don’t say goodbye. I just grab the old ritual blade from the wall of the barn, the one I haven’t used since the equinox rites five years ago, and walk straight into the storm.

The center of the orchard moves when it wants to. It’s not marked. Not fenced. But I feel it like gravity.

It’s darker here, thicker. The trees lean inward like a mouth preparing to speak. The breath-stones glow faintly beneath the moss, pulsing with a light that hurts to look at directly. The wind cuts like a blade. I drop to my knees and press my hand to the soil.

It shivers under me.

“I’m still here,” I say softly. “I never left. Even when she did.”

No answer. Just the rising sound of wind and leaves and something like a scream too deep for human throat.

“I don’t know what this orchard needs,” I go on, voice shaking now. “But if it’s blood… if that’s what keeps it breathing, then you’ll have it. All of it.”

I slash the blade across my palm and press it to the rootline, right where the breath-stones converge. My blood runs hot, soaking into the soil. The glyphs on my back blaze to life.

“Take it,” I whisper. “Take me if you have to. But leave her be. Let her find her way. Just… don’t make her suffer for my failings.”

The trees bow.

The wind stills.

And the storm breaks open like a heart too full to hold itself together anymore.