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The Gourd Fall 
by Donna J. W. Munro 

By rights, the queen of the Fall should have been Sorcha’s, eldest daughter of the Mclau clan. They’d won the spot with their industry, more children, more live goats, more strung fruits, and a field full of gourds as big as her head. The gourds were the thing that ought to have sealed the deal.

She should be wearing the wreath of dried vines, evergreen, and woven dry seed.

She should be riding in the card loaded with the fruits of their gourd field.

But she wasn’t.

Lorlau clan’s daughter, Mol, paraded around in the fine-spun gown of gourd queen, farm to farm, collecting the gourd harvest and pissing in the furrows to bless the next year’s toil.

The Lorlau fields hadn’t produced near the number of sweet, colorful gourds, and it only had birthed one of the god fruits unlike the hundreds of fine pumpkins their own god fruit field had birthed. All the Mclau pumpkins were bright with sky colors, blue and pink and white and black. They thumped under rapping knocks with music. They smelled of summer sun. They were perfect, every one of them.

But none were the monster single fruit the Lorlau had produced. That one fruit had wrested the honor of the Fall and the gourd queen magic from the Mclau. Her piss didn’t bless, her kisses weren’t gravid, and her tears didn’t drive away the spirits like Mol’s did.

Sorcha didn’t understand how a monstrous fruit, lumpy and misshapen, orange as any plain pumpkin, could outweigh the blessings of the Mclau’s five new children and twenty new goats, let alone all the perfect pumpkins they’d added to the fall. It just wasn’t fair.

She pouted when the gourde wagon passed her, but she joined the procession as father ordered, filing in the throng of children they’d gathered from each farm. The little ones giggled and danced in the slow parade of youth, some never having seen a fall let alone been part of it before.

The adults trained behind, quiet and red-eyed from crying as the gods intended.

At the front of the wagon, Mol waved and sang the gourd queen song as they approached the center of town, her face beautiful and glowing like the sun on a late summer afternoon when the Cold hasn’t begun its stalking and demanding.

The priests stepped in front of the wagon waving the vines of green spring gourds to distract the Cold as the procession neared the edge of town and the cliff that hung above Cold’s kingdom, dark and deep. Sorcha’s heart was cold, dark and deep, when she thought of Mol in the monster’s arms, living as one of his chosen in ice, never hungry, never tired. It ought to be her!

The procession ended and the Fall began, first with each child that walks and talks picking a gourd that matched them to carry to the edge. They sang thanks for a good harvest and a happy life, then flung the gourd into Cold’s kingdom. Silence.

We listened. No thumps or crashes.

Cold took the offering and everyone cheered, even Sorcha. A successful gourde fall meant a gentler winter.

Next came the adults. Each family walked together holding a child that crawls and cries. A few families had no child like that and had to pluck a walking child of theirs from the crowd. Without song, they kissed and hugged their children until the priests raised and shook the vines, shouting the name of Sun. The adults dropped their children into the hole then stumbled back praying for their death to be quick. Sorcha didn’t pray such foolish prayers. Her own baby brother Em had gone to Cold last Fall, and she’d been glad. He’d been so thin and wheezy that ol’ Pa told her own ma she might have to let him starve if he did learn to walk. Instead, Ma broke Em’s toes so he’d be taken by Cold to the kingdom where he’d never be hungry again.

Once the adults cleared away from the edge, it was Mol’s turn–dumb Mol who never understood how to tend winter’s berries or cut the ice from the pond. She’d never danced with the snow or eaten frozen pumpkin seeds under a clear winter sky with Cold.

Sorcha knew because Cold told her.

Cold wanted her, not Mol with her monster pumpkin.

The priests turned to Mol, who was beautiful. She was full of color and curves for twelve summers. The Lorlau family had overfed her and that monster pumpkin for their whole lives just for this moment… and the pots full of Mol’s fertile piss they must have hoarded away.

Come to me, little one, Cold said in only a whisper because its season was new.

They all thought Cold called to Mol.

Maybe it did, but Sorcha knew Cold wanted her as much.

As Mol took floating, graceful steps down from the gourd wagon, spending kisses on the children who ringed around her singing, Sorcha stepped away from them all.

She’d been pissing in pots under for Ma to find. She’d been blessing the corners of the fields and barns. She’d been spitting chewed seeds into dried gourds for the new brides to eat on their wedding nights. The Mclau would prosper.

The priests struck Mol with the ends of their vines, chanting songs that meant nothing to the Cold. Sorcha knew because their prayers didn’t slow frost or stop blizzards. Cold wanted what it wanted.

Come to me, Sorcha.

Cold did want her.

She broke from the pack of them and ran for the edge.

It all slowed. Ma’s voice. Ol’ Pa’s calling. The priests demanding. Mol weeping. All the children full of gasps. They wove into a wave that carried her as she leapt from the edge of the cliff into the bitter dark.

Frost coated her cheeks and eyelashes, but she laughed as she fell, and her laughs sounded like an icy pumpkin seeds grinding between teeth.

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Fiction © Copyright Donna J. W. Munro
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

More from author Donna J. W. Munro:

Revelation: Poppet Cycle Book One

In a dark future, people with money live in doomed cities and use the recently deceased as
repurposed servants and workers called poppets. Ellie DesLoge is the teen heiress of the
company that makes and distributes poppets–your basic reprogrammed flesh robot complete
with training chips and kill switches. If Ellie does everything her Aunt Cordelia says, she’ll have a
life of wealth and power. If she chooses to be what is planned for her, life will be perfect.
Everything she ever dreamed. But something about her sweet poppet Thom goes against what
Aunt Cordelia and tradition have taught her. Will she choose to believe what everyone knows is
true or will she follow what her heart tells her about Thom? Her choice will change the world.

Available on Amazon!