Page 9 of Pumpkin Spiced Orc

IVY

T here’s something about the sound of tires on gravel that makes my stomach twist, low and slow, like a coil of rope being pulled taut.

It’s not loud, just steady—too steady for a deer, too late in the day for the mail truck, and too familiar to be anything good.

Out here, that crunch means trouble’s wearing a seatbelt and driving with one hand out the window.

No one just shows up in Embervale unless they’re lost, deluded, or looking for a fight they think they’ve already won.

I’m elbow-deep in the sink, scrubbing the remains of orchard clay off a pair of boots that haven’t seen pavement in a decade, when the screen door creaks and groans under the weight of a too-confident push. The metal sings its tired warning, and I don’t have to turn to know who it is.

“Well, hell,” says a voice that’s all teeth and charm and the faintest undertone of mockery. “Either you’re still breathing, or this place really does have ghosts.”

“Brody.” I don’t even blink.

He strolls in like he’s been summoned, like the orchard itself reached out and dragged him through the hills and dust just to irritate me. Same worn denim jacket, same smirk that looks carved on, same boots thudding against my father’s floor like it owes him something.

The kitchen light catches in his hair as he leans against the counter, eyeing the room like he’s cataloguing all the ways it’s gotten older and none of them good. “God, Ivy. It smells like someone buried regret in here and forgot to dig it up.”

“Glad you could make it,” I say, drying my hands with the towel that’s more holes than fabric.

“You texted.”

“I didn’t ask you to come.”

“You said, and I quote, ‘still alive, orchard haunted, send snacks.’ I brought myself. I am the snack.”

I give him a look.

He tosses his keys on the kitchen table with a clatter that echoes in the silence like a stone dropped down a well. “You’re not alone,” he says, already switching tones like he thinks I won’t notice.

I say nothing.

“There’s another pair of boots outside,” he continues. “Big ones. Real big. And there’s a smell near the barn that’s definitely not livestock or dead leaves.”

I meet his gaze. “It’s Garruk.”

His face freezes for half a second before the smile returns. It’s thinner now.

“You’re serious.”

“Do I look like I’m kidding?”

“Garruk Thorne? The quiet one who used to fix fence posts like he was punishing them?”

“The very same.”

Brody steps back like the air’s suddenly too warm. “I thought he disappeared after the orchard fire. Word was, he took off into the woods and never came back.”

“Well, turns out the rumors were wrong.”

He crosses his arms. “You let him back in?”

“He was never gone. He’s been here this whole time, watching over this place.”

“And you trust him?”

“He hasn’t given me a reason not to.”

Brody snorts. “You’ve always had a blind spot for brooding types.”

“And you’ve always been afraid of anything you can’t outtalk.”

That lands. He shuts up, just for a moment. Outside, wind presses against the windows like it wants in. The scent of crushed leaves and distant ash seeps under the frame.

“I’m not staying,” I say, softer now, half to myself.

He nods slowly. “Sure. Just passing through. That why you’ve got dirt under your nails and your mom’s old sweater on?”

I glance down at my hands. “It’s cold.”

“It’s the orchard.”

“What does that mean?”

He shrugs. “It pulls. Always has. Your mom said it felt like roots wrapping around her ankles.”

I turn away, throat tight.

“Don’t look at me like I’m the one tying you here,” he says. “You’re doing that all on your own.”

I head outside before I say something I’ll regret. The air is sharper than before, wind slicing through the orchard rows like it’s trying to cut a path. The sun’s dropped behind the ridge, leaving the sky an overripe blue, the kind that comes just before the world turns to ink.

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.