Amara Sinclair's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Amara Sinclair had been in Needlefall three weeks, and she had already watched four people walk past her open hands. The last one was a boy with a split lip who pretended not to see the tea she offered from her thermos. She sat on an overturned crate at the edge of the market, her locs pulled back with a strip of green cloth, her skirt dusty at the hem. She had come to this city to build a place for people like him. So far she had built nothing. A blanket on the ground was not a sanctuary. It was a woman sitting on the ground. By afternoon she understood the problem. Needlefall moved. The market shifted streets on market days. The guard sweeps pushed loiterers from one block to the next. Anyone soft enough to need her was soft enough to keep walking. A door that stayed in one place would never catch them. A door that followed them might. She counted her money twice on the crate. Her grandmother's ring. The pay from two months of kitchen work in the last town. The small roll she had promised herself she would not touch. It was almost enough. Almost was the word that had stopped her every time before. The lot at the town's south edge sold used haulers and cast-off homes. Amara walked the rows until she stopped at a grey and white mobile home mounted on a long trailer. It stood two stories, with a raised loft and windows on every side. A covered porch ran along the front. It had the shape of a meeting hall someone had taught to travel. She climbed the step and put her hand flat on the door. The seller named a price. Amara named a lower one and pushed her whole roll across the hood of his truck, plus the ring. He looked at the ring a long time. He said the axles were sound and the roof did not leak and the last owner had died in the loft, if that mattered to her. She said it did not. She said she wanted the keys before dark. He handed them over at dusk. Amara climbed inside alone. The main room was wide enough for a long table and two rows of chairs. The loft above could sleep four. She stood in the middle of the empty floor and listened to the trailer settle under her weight. For the first time since she had crossed into Needlefall, she had walls to offer. Then she looked out the front window at the dark lot and understood the next problem. She had a sanctuary and no way to move it. The truck that could pull it was not hers, and the man who owned one was already locking his gate for the night.