Page 1 of Fixing the Grumpy Pumpkin King
Prologue
LordMabonhadbeencounting.
Not that he wanted to admit it.
That he’d marked every single autumn that passed without a prayer, without one proper offering, without even a whispered acknowledgment of his name. But the truth was undeniable: he’d been tallying them like a miser counted coins. Two hundred and fifty-nine years since the last summoning. Two hundred and fifty-nine autumns watching from across the veil while mortals butchered his sacred season.
His castle sat in the Loam, a magical realm full of magic where deities waited when the mortal world had no use for them.
It was beautiful here.
Or it had been.
The halls stretched long, wood gleaming like polished chestnuts. Vines climbed the walls, their leaves in shades of amber and crimson.
Or they should have been.
Lately, the colors had been fading. The golds looked muddy. The reds barely registered. Even the light penetrating the tall windows felt weaker, like someone was slowly dimming the sun.
The Loam didn’t lie. It reflected what Lord Mabon was: a harvest god running on fumes.
He rose from his chair and made his way through the empty halls. His footsteps echoed. They always echoed. There was no one here to absorb the sound. Just him and the fading grandeur of a realm built for celebrations that no longer happened.
The scrying pool waited in the center of the great hall, water smooth as glass. Lord Mabon knelt beside it, running his fingers along the surface. The water rippled, then cleared, showing him what he both craved and dreaded to see.
Within the mortal realm the Equinox had passed with barely a whisper and now it was October. The countdown to the last hurrah of his season and it was already being butchered.
He watched a suburban street somewhere, it didn’t matter where because they all looked the same now. The Front yards were cluttered with plastic skeletons. Inflatable ghosts bobbing in the breeze. Fake spiderwebs stretched across every available surface like the spiders were having some kind of territorial war. And by the Mother, was that a scarecrow with a light-up pumpkin head? Its garish orange glow was an insult to everything autumn should be.
No one remembered what it meant. The thinning of the veil between worlds. The final harvest before winter’s sleep. The honoring of what was and what would be again.
Now it was just an excuse to gorge on corn syrup and dress children as superheroes.
Lord Mabon pulled his hand back. The image dissolved.
This ache wasn’t new. He’d carried it for decades. No, centuries. It was the feeling of fading, of losing substance. Deities needed worship like mortals needed air. Notthe groveling, fearful kind. Just acknowledgment. Someone remembering to say thanks to the autumn winds or sharing a harvest feast because they were actually grateful, not because it photographed well for social media.
Something. Anything.
He could feel it in his blood, the way October pulled at him. The air shifted. Leaves turned. Days grew shorter. The veil between worlds grew thin, as it did every year at this time. That thinning sustained him now, though barely. A trickle of power as the barrier weakened and mortals unconsciously acknowledged that something was different about this time of year, even if they’d forgotten why.
But he was still too weak to do anything but watch it happen.
He was sustained by scraps. By people who celebrated autumn without knowing they were celebrating him. That family last week, baking an apple pie and filling their kitchen with cinnamon, not even thinking about why that felt right. The couple he’d watched yesterday, walking through crunching leaves and breathing deep, grateful for the crisp air without knowing who to thank. Some kid building a leaf pile just to destroy it, laughing like that wasn’t the whole point of his season. Creation, destruction, the cycle continuing.
It wasn’t enough.
It was barely anything.
But it had kept him from disappearing entirely.
The hall stretched before him, vast and beautiful and utterly empty. He’d watched the colors fade year by year, watched his realm dim as his power waned.
Some nights, he wondered what happened when a deity finally faded completely. Did they simply cease? Dissolve into the Loam itself, becoming part of the background hum of forgotten things? Or was there something worse? An eternity of watching, translucent and powerless, as the world moved on without them.
He wasn’t ready to find out.
He returned to his chair and sank into it like he wanted it to swallow him whole. Through the windows, he could see the gardens. Or what was left of them. The apple trees still stood, but their fruit was smaller this year. The pumpkin patch yielded fewer gourds. Even here, in his own realm, scarcity crept in.
