The Pumpkin Princess

The Baby

"Jack?" Sally asks quietly from across the table, stirring her tea. "Yes, Sally?" Jack inquires absent mindedly, his focus on sketching out his ideas for next Halloween. Sally looks around the room, picking nervously at one of her stitches, "Jack...I want a... baby."

Jack was startled by this request, his hands slip and smear dark ink across his page of drawings.

"A b-baby!?" Jack chokes out, not knowing how to react to such a delicate question. Sally sets her tea spoon down, "Yes, Jack... A baby... Please?" Her words ending in a plea. Jack ignores the ink dripping from his fingers, and grabs Sally's hand in his own, staining her skin and the tablecloth. "I haven't the faintest idea if such a thing is even possible," Jack starts to say, Sally's face immediately falls, "but if that is what you want, then I won't stop until I've found a way- Jack tries to continue but is cut off by Sally suddenly jumping up to lean across the the table and hug Jack. "Oh Jack, do you really mean it?" Sally asks. "Why of course!" Jack responds, pulling away slightly, "However, I do think the table needs a bit of cleaning up." Jack observes almost teasingly, a small "oh!" escaping Sally's lips as she looks down to see a mixture of ink and tea spilt all over the once clean table cloth.

Jack grabs Sally's tea cup and his sketches, tossing them on the counter of their small kitchen while Sally peels the table cloth off the table, the wet fabric sticking to the wooden surface. Sally turns and fills the sink with water and soap, before dunking the soiled table cloth in the sudsy water, cleaning it. Once the table cloth had been cleaned and been rinsed of soap, Sally hangs it up outside to dry.

While Sally had been cleaning downstairs, Jack was upstairs in their room, looking through all his books, trying to find a way for a child to be made between him and Sally. There was of course, the obvious choice, make one like Sally was made. But Jack didn't much like that idea, and when he proposed it to Sally, she didn't like it either. She wanted her OWN baby, not made from parts of others.

So Jack, as he promised, searched for quite some time for a way to achieve what Sally wanted. He even went as far as to travel through the other doors. Jack spent many days door jumping, trying to find something of use. He found nothing.

Sally was starting to grow restless, and Jack became increasingly frustrated and irritable. Halloween was coming up and he had been focused on trying to get a baby for so long that he forgot to plan for Halloween. Needless to say, Halloween was a disaster that year.

Yet, Jack had not given up, he needed to find a way. There had to be a way. Jack turned to story books that he had gotten from the human world. He had heard that there was truth behind the silly stories, and Jack was grasping at straws at this point. In many of the stories, there were things about wishing on stars, and the dreams coming true. That's what Jack wanted, his dream to come true.

As many of you probably already know, there are no stars in Halloween Town. So Jack traveled through the Christmas door once more, to wish upon a star or two.