Amber Honeywell's Arc

Chapter 10 of 14

The footsteps had not been gone an hour when Winter Flint came up the lane. He stopped beside the stone where the jar had been, set his staff down, and laid a bunch of bright wildflowers on the empty mark. Amber knew at once it was a marker, not a gift. "Sit," he said. "You need to hear this standing or sitting. Choose." She stayed standing. He pulled a folded scrap from his pouch. The parchment was torn at the edges and smudged with soil. He held it flat against his palm so she could see the hasty ink. "The jar is already gone from the basket woman's hands," he said. "Passed at the crossroad. Paid for in advance." His blue eyes did not move from hers. "She was a runner. Not the buyer." Amber's throat tightened. "Who." It was not a question she could shape into one. Winter tapped the smudged ink. A crude sketch sat under the words: a low carriage, two horses with pale eyes, a hooded driver at the reins. "Eclipse Carriage came down the north track at dusk. The jar went into a gloved hand. I saw the snake coiled on the seat beside the driver — patchwork scales, every color you've been bleeding into your soil." He folded the letter again. "It knows your color. It came for it." "Whose carriage," she said. "Not one I'll name out loud here." His mouth was a thin line. "Someone who buys what shouldn't be sold. Fear, mostly, is what I feel. You gave a true jar to a stranger, and the stranger handed it up the road before the sun set. Whoever drinks it tonight will dream true tomorrow. And they will know your gate." Amber looked at the wildflowers on the empty stone. Eleven years pressed against her ribs again, but quieter now, like a held breath letting go. The jar was not coming back. The buyer was not the woman with the basket, and never had been. She picked up the torn letter from Winter's hand and folded it into her apron. "Then I work through the night," she said. "And I decide what leaves the gate next." Winter nodded once, picked up his staff, and turned down the lane to watch the road.