Chapter 1
CHAPTER I
Pumpkin Seeds
“No,” uttered the Pumpkin-Headed Man, his voice as sharp and hollow, trying to get rid of the chirpy rats.
“But sir!” squeaked Father Rat, his whiskers trembling with the desperation of drought. “We’ve fulfilled your every request—we have taken the two children you desired. We did it all, as was agreed. Our lands are dry as old bones; not a single seed takes root. Have pity, noble gourd, for we are starving!”
The Pumpkin-Headed Man, who loathed most of all the shrill sting of insubordination, said nothing at first. With eerie calm, he poured them each a cup of his steaming amber brew—tea steeped with ground pumpkin seeds, warm and silken, deceptively kind.
For the tea was no ordinary comfort, but a whispering charm—one that dulled discontent, made defiance taste like madness, and truth wither like fruit left too long in the sun.
~—❧~
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As the rats drank—sip by numbing sip—their minds began to fog. The rebellion in their little eyes waned like a waning moon. They stumbled homeward, Father Rat and his son, their thoughts thick and uneasy.
“Why didn’t he pay us?” the elder whispered, though no answer came. “Have we not honoured the pact of our ancestors—the sacred exchange? We bring him souls, pure and unspoiled, and in return we are nourished by seeds. It was art he pursued, they said. Art that demands the price of children.”
But tonight, they returned empty-pawed, with aching bellies and heavier hearts.
~—❧~
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The rats had toiled in those pumpkin fields for countless seasons. Never had the mud cracked so deep, nor the sun burned so cruel. One morning, when the skies themselves seemed to hiss with heat, they scurried forth in vain, hoping for scraps of harvest from soil that had long since stopped listening.
Father Rat, whose bones ached with age and drought alike, slunk back into the cool shadows of the burrow where his wife stirred jam in the pot.
“What’s that divine smell?” he croaked.
“Pumpkin, of course,” she replied, not turning from her cauldron. “What else is left? If we do not preserve it now, it will rot before our eyes. Pumpkin jam—our last sweetness.”
Before he could sit, a cry arose from the fields.
---They rushed outside to find a commotion: one of the younger rats, having dug desperately for water, had unearthed a wooden figure, half-rotted but unmistakable. It was a girl—a girl of wood—with a pumpkin for a head.
And just then, as if the sky itself had gasped, rain began to fall.
They carried the statue with solemn paws to the Foolgrith—their oracle of old, who hadn’t moved from his throne since the Great Storm trapped him beneath the swamp. His voice was always damp, and his wisdom often muddled by mildew, but he was, nonetheless, revered.
“My eyes cannot see,” the Foolgrith wheezed. “But my nose smells fresh mud… Is it raining? Or am I dreaming yet again?”
“It is a wooden girl, wise one. The rain came the moment we touched her,” the rats declared.
“My ears are no longer loyal servants,” mumbled the Foolgrith. “But this I know: if it was found in mud—it is sacred. No other proof is needed.”
From that day on, the rats bowed to the wooden girl. They crowned her with flowers during feasts and left offerings of jam and seeds at her feet. The drought, it seemed, had given them a goddess.
~—❧~
