Quiet Beneath the Branches

[Prof. Sindor Aloyarc]

The wind has stopped. The branches of the Pumpkin Tree no longer rustle with secrets, yet their faces still shine on in the breaking November dawn.

Pipkin is safe now, breathing beside you once more, though the cost lingers on your skin. One year of your life given freely. One year less in your future, traded for friendship and love.

Was it worth it? The pumpkins murmur yes, and you agree.

The group walks from the field together, fog unraveling around you. The black house fades behind, its dark windows closing like tired eyes. Ahead lies home. The familiar streets, the porches, the last of the guttering jack-o’-lanterns that signal your Halloween is done along with everyone else’s. Yet you know the holiday and those like it are not over. It never truly ends. It waits in stories, in rituals, in the way we carry our dead with us.

This journey has shown you that death is not the opposite of life but its companion. In Egypt, you learned that remembrance is protection. In Greece, that memory nourishes the soul. In Rome the dead can be restless unless honored. From the Celts you inherited fire to burn fear away. From Paris, the dance of skeletons that reminds us we all turn together. Mexico taught you about laughter and color in grief, and the shadows of Asia gave you stories to keep lanterns lit for those who wander. The witch burnings showed you the danger of fear twisted into cruelty, while the Forgotten Ones showed you the cruelty of silence itself.

Everywhere, a message thrummed over and over: we are remembered through the living. Forgetting is the only true death on this side of the veil.

And so you step back into November knowing you are changed. The air is colder, yes, but you carry warmth in your chest. You carry names, faces, songs, and shadows. You carry Pipkin’s laughter, and your own courage, and the quiet understanding that every autumn to come will bring you again to the threshold of this truth.

The Pumpkin Tree will stand always, in fields or dreams or memory. You may not see its branches tomorrow or even next year, perhaps not for some time to come, but you know it is there. Rooted in time and bearing the fullness of every soul that has ever loved, feared, or hoped. When you next light a candle, or carve a pumpkin, or whisper a name into the wind, you will be walking once more beneath its boughs.

The story is finished, yet it is only the beginning. Because the Pumpkin Tree does not end with Pipkin, and it does not end with you. It waits for every step, every breath, every remembrance. It waits for all who dare to follow its lanterns through shadow, fire, and time.

And it will whisper always: Even in darkness, you are carried.