The Orchard of Names

Elric Vane had not meant to wander so far-- not tonight. The fog had thickened faster than usual, and the ground beneath him was soft with thaw. Yet there he stood, lantern flickering weakly, before a crooked beech tree carved with a name he hadn't spoken aloud in two decades. His name-- almost.

Elaric. The extra syllable caught in his throat like a memory he hadn't chosen.

Beneath it, another name had begun to take shape-- Isa... --as if the tree were deciding whether to remember or forget.

The Orchard lay just beyond the edge of the village, where no official map dared extend. The trees there were pale-barked and closely packed, twisted like bones left too long in the cold. Villagers whispered that names appeared on them days before a death. No one knew who carved them, or if anyone did.

Elric knew. Or rather, he suspected. That was nearly the same thing in a village this small.

For fifteen years, Elric had served has the record keeper of Morrow Hollow. He documented births and deaths, disputes and marriages, and did so without question. He was dependable, quiet, and entirely alone in this world. His past-- a failed seminary education and one lost winter in the hills-- was something he kept behind the walls of his stone cottage. where ink dried faster than blood and silence was routine.

But lately, the village had begun to shift.

It started with the girl at the chapel garden-- Margery Feln. Everyone claimed she'd lived there since birth, yet Elric could find no record of her. None of his ledgers mentioned a baptism or birth. When he asked the pastor, the man simply frowned.

"She's always been here, hasn't she?"

Even stranger, a narrow cottage near the baker's shop appeared overnight, according to Elric's memory. A building that hadn't existed until suddenly well-aged and lived-in, with laundry strung outside and a fresh trail worn through the grass.

And then there was the ledger. Page 173, once blank, now bore his own handwriting-- entries he hadn't written. Names he didn't recognize. One of them: Isaiah Callow.

Elric hadn't heard that name in twenty years.

Isaiah had been a seminarian too, full of laughter and sermons he recited like poetry. But winter had taken him-- or more accurately, Elric had let winter take him. A river crossing gone wrong. A quarrel too harsh. A choice made too slowly. Isaiah's body was never found. And in a moment of self-preservation and cold practicality, Elric never wrote him into the death records.

Omitting a name was supposed to be like folding paper over a page-- no one could see it, and soon, no one would remember it had ever existed.

But the Orchard remembered.

He returned the next night. The fog opened like cloth as he passed through it. This time, the beech tree bore both names fully etched:

Elaric Vane.

Isaiah Callow.

From his coat, he withdrew the village ledger. It was older now-- its pages felt brittle, as if it too had aged unnaturally. He turned to the last blank page and began to write.

Elric Vane. Born of silence. Keeper of memory. Betrayer of it. Witness to Isaiah Callow's final breath. Recorder of none.

He signed his name, his true name. Not the one he abandoned, not the one he buried.

The air shifted. A low, slow exhale moved through the trees like a tide pulling back.

The fog unraveled. The orchard dimmed and bent, branches bowing low. One by one, the names on the trees shimmered, faded, and returned-- not as carvings, but as headstones. The Orchard was gone, replaced by a graveyard sunken in the field.

Years later, travelers still speak of the graveyard with no church. Children play between the stones, laughing at the odd stones with names too faint to read.

And sometimes, someone will point to a twin set of markers near the center.

Elric Vane. Isaiah Callow.

"No one remembers who they were," a local might question.

"Just that one of them kept the names. Until he gave his away."