Orchard Wretch

The oldest tree

The oldest tree in the lower orchard had no name anyone could agree on. One family called it the Grandmother Pear, though it bore no pears. Another called it the Hollow Tree because a lightning strike had opened one side. The children simply called it Oldest. Its roots ran under a ruined wall and beneath the path to the abandoned houses. Each autumn it produced a handful of dark fruit, small and bitter, that no one brought to market.

A keeper named Varo watched the tree through a long drought. He had inherited the orchard map from his sister, who had left the valley years earlier. Her name was still written on the first page, but the ink had faded where water had touched it. Varo did not know whether she had moved by choice or been carried farther away by the old flood. He kept the map because it showed the routes to every doorstep that once opened onto the orchard.

When the dark fruit fell, Varo carried a basket to the abandoned houses. He left one apple at each threshold and returned before night. The practice began as a way to keep animals from eating spoiled fruit near the tree. It became a ritual of memory, though Varo never called it that. He told no one which doorstep belonged to his sister. At the end of the route, he paused below Oldest and listened to the roots shift in the earth.

Varo kept his sister's map folded in waxed cloth, but the paper still smelled faintly of smoke. She had taught him the route when they were children, asking him to count doorways instead of steps. After she left the valley, he kept counting. He did not know whether the old houses made him feel close to her or simply kept the question alive. When Wretch began the fruit route, Varo saw the shape of his own habit reflected in the creature's. Neither of them said this aloud.

A small shape in the root hollow

One morning, Varo found a small figure beneath the tree. It was no taller than a child’s shoulder, with a body of braided root, a cloak of black leaves, and two empty baskets woven from thin branches. A single dark apple hung from a twig held in its hand. The figure did not speak. When Varo placed the basket on the ground, it lifted the handle and followed the route toward the ruined houses.

The orchard workers watched from a distance. Some thought it was a scarecrow pulled loose by wind; others said it had stepped out of the root hollow. Varo did not decide what it was. He asked whether it wanted to carry the basket. The figure nodded once. It moved slowly and stopped before each threshold, waiting to see whether Varo would set down a fruit. He left one at each door. The figure carried the empty baskets back beneath Oldest.

Varo began calling it Wren because it moved lightly and listened to small sounds. The figure did not respond to the name at first. When he shortened it to Wretch, it turned its head. Varo disliked the word’s harshness and apologized. The figure reached for a black leaf and placed it in his palm. He understood that it was not hurt by the name, though he could not know what the gesture meant. The workers kept the nickname because it was the only word that made the little being look up.

Fruit for empty doorways

Wretch learned the orchard route one doorstep at a time. It carried dark fruit to the houses that had been abandoned after the lower flood. Most doors had been removed for firewood, but their frames remained in the walls. Wretch placed an apple on the nearest stone and waited. It did not knock. It did not enter. When Varo asked why it left fruit where no one would take it, Wretch set one apple beside the faded name on his map.

The route included a cottage where a child named Lio had once lived. The house was empty by the time Varo began his rounds. No record confirmed whether Lio had moved with family, gone to the city, or been lost in the flood. Varo had only a name scratched into the doorframe and a height mark beside it. He left fruit there because the house remained on the map. Wretch learned to pause longer at that threshold than at the others.

The apples darkened quickly in the rain, but Wretch never seemed to mind. It collected the ones left behind and returned them to the soil under Oldest. Varo thought this practical; the orchard needed compost. He did not know whether Wretch understood that the fruit might feed the roots. It continued the route even when the houses were empty. The work was not a message that someone would return. It was a way to remember that each door had once opened for a person.

The name that would not return

Wretch could repeat many sounds. It learned the bell that marked the start of the morning route, the creak of Varo’s wheelbarrow, and the names of the trees. It spoke only one human name with care: Lio. The sound came out slowly, each syllable shaped as if it had been carried a long way. Varo asked where Wretch had learned it. The small figure touched the old doorframe and then its own chest. That was all the answer anyone received.

Varo searched the orchard records for Lio. He found a tax list with a damaged corner, a school slate with three children’s names, and a note about a family leaving the lower houses. None showed what happened afterward. He refused to tell Wretch that Lio was dead or that the child would return. The name did not appear in the roots or the new maps. It remained on a doorframe, fading under weather.

Wretch kept bringing one dark apple to Lio’s doorstep. The fruit basket had a separate pocket for that apple, woven tighter than the rest. Varo asked whether Wretch wanted him to search beyond the valley. The figure touched the map and then shook its head. It did not ask Varo to find Lio. It seemed to ask only that the route continue. Varo honored the difference. He did not turn an unanswered name into a promise that the person was waiting nearby.

The baskets

The baskets were small at first. Wretch wove them from the thinnest roots that fell near Oldest, leaving each one open at the top so the fruit could breathe. A larger basket made the route difficult. The handles rubbed against the black-leaf cloak, and the Wretch had to stop at the stone bridge. It preferred two small loads, one in each hand. Varo learned not to fill them beyond what could be carried without scraping the thresholds.

The orchard’s children helped weave new baskets after a winter storm snapped several branches. They used reed, willow, and thin strips of bark. Each child added one knot in a different place, so the Wretch could recognize who had helped. The baskets did not last many seasons. When one broke, the children returned its strands to the roots beneath Oldest. Wretch never asked them to make a stronger one. The repeated act of repair mattered more than a basket that could survive forever.

Wretch’s hobby became selecting the fruit for each doorstep. The apples were not all the same. Some were hard and sour, others soft and sweet, and some had dark skin that seemed almost black. Wretch held each one near its ear and listened, though Varo heard no sound. It chose the smallest fruit for Lio’s door. Varo thought this might be a game. He let the figure choose anyway. The choice gave the route a meaning no ledger could fully explain.

The basket handles were lined with strips of cloth so they would not cut into Wretch's branchlike wrists. Varo offered leather, but the figure chose the softer woven strips. It held one basket close and let the other hang at its side. When a child accidentally dropped a basket, Wretch waited while the child fixed the broken weave. It did not take the work away. The child was embarrassed, and the small repair gave them something useful to do with their hands. Wretch carried the basket only after the final knot was tied.

Varo leaves the map

Varo grew older, and his legs began to hurt on the lower path. He tried to pass the route to a younger keeper, but the new worker wanted to clear the abandoned houses and plant the empty lots with market trees. Varo understood the need for food and income. He also knew the old doorframes were the only record some families had left in the valley. He asked the growers to wait until each threshold had been documented.

Wretch helped copy the map. It carried charcoal and a strip of paper, setting them down wherever Varo stopped. The figure did not draw lines, but it placed a black fruit beside each door that needed a note. The young keeper recorded the location and the marks on the frame. At Lio’s house, the height marks had blurred into the wood. The name remained legible, though barely. Wretch set its smallest apple there and waited until the ink dried.

When Varo finally left the orchard, he gave the original map to the new keeper. He did not promise to return. He said the route was not a chain around anyone’s ankle. If the houses had to come down, the names should be copied first. Wretch accompanied him to the end of the lane, then turned back toward Oldest. Varo looked over his shoulder only once. The figure stood beneath the tree with both baskets empty and the apple still at Lio’s door.

The new keeper kept asking Varo whether he was sure about leaving the lower valley. Varo said he was sure about moving closer to his niece, but not sure about what had become of his sister. He had learned to live beside that uncertainty without turning it into a daily search. He hoped the route would remain useful to the orchard after he was gone. Wretch stood near the door while he packed, then placed one dark apple in the empty map case. Varo removed it and set it on the table, where the younger keeper could decide what to do with it.

The orchard circle

Years later, the growers formed Roots Through Ash to share labor across the recovering orchard. BrannBrannFirst-generation championBrann tends fruit trees growing through the roofs of burned houses.Read this biography → joined the circle and helped redraw paths after a second fire. The group found Wretch already walking its route. They did not appoint it a keeper or ask it to deliver fruit. The figure kept to the abandoned doorways and the oldest tree. Sometimes it carried a seed for the new orchard; most often it carried the dark apples that no market wanted.

BrannBrannFirst-generation championBrann tends fruit trees growing through the roofs of burned houses.Read this biography → asked whether the circle could move the old tree before the flood season. Its roots were undermining a drainage wall. Wretch placed its basket between the tree and the proposed work. The growers took this as a refusal, but BrannBrannFirst-generation championBrann tends fruit trees growing through the roofs of burned houses.Read this biography → asked what would happen if the wall failed. Wretch touched the old map, then pointed to a route that led uphill. It did not insist that the tree remain untouched. The circle made a new channel and reinforced the wall without cutting the largest roots.

The decision helped both the orchard and the people downstream. Wretch watched the workers move stones and did not interfere. BrannBrannFirst-generation championBrann tends fruit trees growing through the roofs of burned houses.Read this biography → left one empty basket by the tree after the repairs, in case the figure wanted to carry anything. Wretch filled it with fallen apples and carried them to the old houses. The circle’s name did not become a claim on its labor. It remained a group of people trying to repair land without forgetting who had lived there before.

The growers occasionally asked Wretch to show them an old route. It would walk ahead, pause at the edge of a broken wall, and wait until someone followed safely. It never carried an injured person or chose a path for a household without invitation. The circle learned not to mistake its silence for consent. When Wretch returned to the roots, the workers let it go. Its place among them was a relationship built through repeated encounters, not a duty imposed by the orchard’s needs.

The empty doorstep

The house where Lio had lived stood empty for so long that moss covered the height marks. A young family asked to use the stones for a new wall. The request was practical. The house was unsafe, and the path around it had become difficult for carts. Wretch carried a dark apple to the threshold and set it down. It did not block the workers. It returned each morning to find the fruit still there, then carried it away before the next rain.

BrannBrannFirst-generation championBrann tends fruit trees growing through the roofs of burned houses.Read this biography → asked whether Wretch wanted the doorway preserved. The figure touched the worn name and the empty basket. The gesture did not answer the question. The growers searched the copied records again and found no later address for Lio. They could not promise that the child would return. The family using the stones agreed to leave one part of the frame in place, with the name protected beneath a small roof tile. The rest of the structure came down safely.

Wretch carried its apple to the remaining threshold and stayed until dusk. It had not lost the whole route, but the doorway looked smaller without the house around it. The next morning, it placed the fruit beside the roof tile. It continued to do so through the season. The growers did not call this hope or grief on its behalf. It might have been both. Wretch’s history could hold unanswered feelings without turning them into facts about the person named on the wood.

When the roof tile was set over the preserved name, the workers asked Wretch whether it approved. The creature touched the edge of the tile and stepped back. The choice belonged to the living family who had kept the mark safe, not to the orchard spirit. BrannBrannFirst-generation championBrann tends fruit trees growing through the roofs of burned houses.Read this biography → wrote down the date and the names of the workers who had moved the stones. Wretch watched the route change without treating every change as betrayal. The missing person remained missing from the record, and the preserved doorway remained a doorway for anyone who needed to find the old path.

The black fruit

The dark fruit came from Oldest only after the first hard frost. It did not taste rotten, though the skin was nearly black and the flesh stained the fingers. Wretch carried it in a small basket lined with leaves. The other baskets held fruit for the outer houses, but the black apple had its own place. Varo had once asked whether Wretch could eat it. The figure had held it in both hands, then placed it among the roots. The tree took it back by spring.

The new growers tried pressing the fruit into cider. It produced a bitter drink that left a copper taste on the tongue. They stopped after one batch. Wretch carried the remaining apples to the abandoned doors. People who found them sometimes left them where they were; others took one home. No one knew whether the fruit offered nourishment or a memory. The route did not require an answer. The baskets returned empty, and Wretch began again the next morning.

A child asked whether every dark apple was meant for Lio. Wretch set one in the child’s palm, then pointed to the old map where several doorways were marked. The child understood that the route held more names than one. The smallest apple still went to the house with the fading letters, but the other fruit went to different thresholds. Wretch did not treat its private waiting as a reason to overlook everyone else who had once lived in the orchard.

Once, a traveler took the black apple home and returned it the next day, wrapped in a clean cloth. He said it had reminded him of a fruit tree his mother kept before the family moved. Wretch accepted the cloth and carried the apple back to the abandoned route. The traveler did not ask to keep it. The exchange gave the fruit a life beyond the story of Lio, though it did not replace that name. Wretch added the cloth to its basket and used it to cushion the next apple.

The roots begin to fail

The old tree’s health declined after the drainage channel changed. Some roots no longer reached the water table, and a storm split one of its largest limbs. Wretch pressed both hands against the trunk. The bark was dry and rough. The growers suggested moving the figure to a younger tree, but Wretch stayed. The oldest roots held the route markers, the composted fruit, and the map tube Varo had hidden years before.

The circle tried to save Oldest by pruning dead branches and covering the exposed roots. BrannBrannFirst-generation championBrann tends fruit trees growing through the roofs of burned houses.Read this biography → brought soil from the upper orchard. Wretch helped carry it in the baskets, one small load at a time. The tree survived the season, but its hollow widened. The figure began sleeping beneath the low limb, where rain could not reach the baskets. It no longer made the full route every day. On some mornings, it carried only one dark apple to Lio’s door.

The growers found the hidden map tube in the hollow. Inside were Varo’s original notes and a scrap of paper with the name of his sister. The ink had run, leaving only the first letter. Wretch held the scrap against the tree and then placed it back inside the tube. No one knew whether this was the name it had been waiting for. The roots did not return the missing letters. The circle preserved the fragment without guessing the rest.

The flood at Oldest

The flood came after a week of rain. The new channel carried water away from the houses, but the old tree stood on a low rise where the soil had loosened. The growers moved the map tube and the seed baskets to higher ground. Wretch refused to leave the tree. BrannBrannFirst-generation championBrann tends fruit trees growing through the roofs of burned houses.Read this biography → asked it to come uphill. The figure looked toward the abandoned doorways, then toward Oldest. The route still connected them; the flood was erasing the path between.

The lower wall gave way at dusk. Water rushed through the orchard and pulled branches from the trees. Wretch carried one black apple to Lio’s threshold. The doorway was already filling with water. It set the apple on the highest stone and turned back toward Oldest. The trunk split along the lightning scar. Roots broke free from the ground, carrying scraps of bark and old fruit into the current.

Wretch tried to hold the lowest root with both hands. The current swept its baskets away first, then pulled the figure from the rise. BrannBrannFirst-generation championBrann tends fruit trees growing through the roofs of burned houses.Read this biography → and the growers reached the upper path, but the water was too strong for anyone to follow. They called Wretch’s name. The figure turned once toward the orchard, holding the empty map tube against its chest. Then the flood carried it beyond the bend. The tree’s top remained visible for several minutes before the water covered it.

The last route

The flood receded over two days. The growers searched the orchard and downstream banks. They found the baskets caught in reeds, the map tube wedged beneath a stone, and one dark apple intact inside a woven pocket. They did not find Wretch’s body. The current had changed the riverbed, and the lower orchard was buried in silt. BrannBrannFirst-generation championBrann tends fruit trees growing through the roofs of burned houses.Read this biography → recorded the creature as missing rather than dead. The name remained in the ledger with an open line beside it.

At the old tree’s site, a root had grown through the route marker and the map tube. The copper marker carried the faded line that led from Oldest to the abandoned houses. The black apple rested in a fork where the root had held it above the mud. The growers left the objects undisturbed until the water had drained away. They did not know whether the route marker could call the missing figure home. They only knew that its last path began there.

On the third night, a shape appeared among the exposed roots. It wore the dark mantle and carried two baskets, though the original baskets were still caught downstream. Its hands were empty. BrannBrannFirst-generation championBrann tends fruit trees growing through the roofs of burned houses.Read this biography → called Wretch. The figure walked to the site of the old tree and placed one palm against the root that held the marker. The shape was not the living body recovered; the body had not been found. It was a spirit caught in the mortal world by the last route and the things it had carried.

The name under the roots

The spirit walked the changed orchard, following paths that no longer existed on the ground. It stopped where the old doorways had stood and listened. At Lio’s house, only the preserved frame remained. The name was almost gone beneath the roof tile. Wretch touched the wood. The roots under the site shifted, but they gave no new letters. The growers did not claim that the person named Lio had died or become part of the spirit. No record proved that. The unanswered name stayed unanswered.

The Ledger Crow asked the orchard circle what had caught Wretch. BrannBrannFirst-generation championBrann tends fruit trees growing through the roofs of burned houses.Read this biography → described the flood, the root-grown route marker, and the final black fruit held above the mud. The accidental joining of the creature’s last route, the marker, and the dark apple had held its departing spirit. No ritual or keeper intended it. The tree, the doorways, and the missing person were not additional souls inside the Wretch. Only the unique orchard creature had been caught.

Wretch kept delivering fruit to abandoned doorsteps. The baskets now carried spirit-fruit, but the gesture remained its own. It could choose which route to walk and sometimes left an apple beneath the preserved name. It could not cross beyond the mortal world. The bind had not become a willing vow just because the figure continued its habit. The Crow recorded the grief and the uncertainty together, refusing to turn one into a tidy answer for the other.

The Crow asked whether Wretch’s deliveries were a message to Lio. BrannBrannFirst-generation championBrann tends fruit trees growing through the roofs of burned houses.Read this biography → said he could not know. The creature had never left a note or waited for a reply. It placed fruit at the doorstep and carried away what spoiled. The work might be mourning, memory, affection, or a habit whose meaning had grown too large to separate from the routine. The ledger preserved all those possibilities as possibilities. A personal story could leave a question open without making the character feel unfinished or less real.

The card and the empty basket

When the card was prepared, BrannBrannFirst-generation championBrann tends fruit trees growing through the roofs of burned houses.Read this biography → brought the route marker, the root fragment, and the single dark apple recovered after the flood. The original baskets remained downstream, repaired by the orchard workers and hung in the common shed. The Crow wrote that Wretch’s spirit had been caught accidentally and that the creature had no confirmed link to the missing Lio beyond the route it kept. The phrase ‘the name the roots will not return’ described a longing, not a solved mystery.

The card held Wretch’s one spirit in the official Mournhand face. The current game data lists Orchard Wretch as a 4-energy 4/4 with no printed ability; ‘Open slot’ is a placeholder, not a mechanic. The fruit deliveries and dark mantle belong to its personal story. They do not create healing, damage, or a special effect in play. The card was not invented as a new face for the character; the actual game design remains authoritative.

Card containment did not release Wretch from the mortal world. It remained in the same condition as before, able to move along the remembered paths but unable to leave. The Crow entered November 6 as its birthday, Scorpio, matching its deep attachment to an unanswered name. Its circle was Roots Through Ash, and its pastime remained delivering dark fruit to abandoned doorsteps. The last line in the ledger was left blank beside Lio’s name. No one knew who might someday fill it, or whether it should be filled at all.