Aelindra Moonwhisper's Arc

Chapter 3 of 9

Aelindra baked through the night and into the gray morning. By the time the officer would find his coat, she had two dozen loaves cooling on the racks and one small pastry set apart on a napkin. The oven still hummed low behind her. The rain cloud drifted at her elbow, watching the pastry the way a dog watches a door. "You should stay in," the cloud said. "I know." "Then stay in." She wrapped the pastry in brown paper and tied it with string. She had seen the boy in the square three mornings running, thin as a broom handle, coughing into his sleeve. She had watched a shopkeeper wave him off the step yesterday. If she waited a week to be careful, he might not last the week. She pulled her hood up over her bare scalp and stepped out into the street. The square was almost empty at that hour. A weather-worn fountain trickled in the middle. The boy sat on the lip of it with his knees pulled up, wrapped in a gray shawl too big for him. His sandals were tied on with twine. Aelindra sat down beside him and set the paper packet between them. He looked at it, then at her hood, then at her eyebrows. He did not ask why she had no hair. He did not ask anything. "Eat it here," she said. "While it's warm." "Why." "Because I made it for you." He untied the string with careful fingers. The pastry inside was glazed and dotted with tiny sugar flowers. He tore off a piece and put it in his mouth. He chewed. He swallowed. His shoulders dropped an inch, then another. The rattle in his breath eased. Color came back into his cheeks in patches, like ink soaking cloth. He looked down at his own hands as if he had not seen them in a while. "What did you do," he said. "Fixed what I could." He ate the rest slowly. The cloud hovered above the fountain, glaring at everything that moved. A woman crossing the square with a basket slowed and stared. A man sweeping a step stopped sweeping. Aelindra had known this would happen. A boy who had been dying yesterday was sitting up straight today, and the bald woman in blue silk was sitting next to him. She kept her hands folded and did not hurry. Hurrying would look worse. She told the boy her shop was on the vined corner, that there was a dry spot behind it out of the wind, and that she would leave the back door unlocked tonight. He nodded once. She stood up and walked home without looking back. Behind her, two more people had stopped to look. By evening the story would reach the council. She had bought the boy a winter and spent her cover to do it.