Antheia Botanis's Arc

Chapter 14 of 15

Antheia set the cutting in the soil and stood up. Coro reached for a bee on a low bloom. Then a shadow crossed the beds. She looked up. Ravens poured over the ridge in a black line, too many to count. They flew west toward the small flower temple she had raised at the edge of her land, a stone circle where villagers left offerings of milk and seed. Her twin's black vine mark was in that flock. She felt it the way she felt her own pulse. She carried Coro to the door and set him inside with the orchid nymph who tended the pots. "Bar it," she said. She ran the path to the temple with the bare crown light on her head. Wings passed over her. The sky went dark in patches. She reached the temple as the first birds struck. They tore petals from the offering bowls. They pulled ivy from the columns and dropped it in shreds. A girl stood on the altar stone. Black shift, bare feet, hair loose. The child who used to answer to Iant lifted one hand and the ravens turned as one body. The columns cracked. The stone circle split down the middle. Milk ran into the dirt. "Raven," Antheia said. "Stop this." The girl looked at her without heat. "Verdis said the temple was in the way." Behind her, Verdis stepped out from the tree line with the dark orchid in one hand and the cactus dragon at their heel. Flowers still opened along its ribs while it walked over broken stone. Verdis set the orchid on the split altar. "You built here without asking," they said. "The seat is shared. You forgot." Antheia knelt and pressed both palms to the ground. She did not fight the ravens. She fought for the roots. She pulled every living thread under the temple toward her greenhouse and the half-eclipse dome, drawing sap, seed, and bulb through the soil like water down a channel. The columns fell. The bowls broke. But the ground beneath went quiet and clean. She had moved the life out before the ravens finished the shell. The temple was gone. What it held was not. Verdis watched her work and said nothing for a long moment. Then, "Neat." The girl on the altar tilted her head. "You saved the roots," she said. "Not the walls." Antheia stood. Her hands were black to the wrists. "I will build the garden where you cannot reach it," she said. "Inside the dome. Every myth-plant. Every seed I have. Come home when you are ready." The ravens lifted and flew east. Verdis followed with the child and the dragon. Antheia walked back through the broken circle with dirt drying on her arms. She had lost the temple. She had kept the living things. One season left, and now a place to plant them all at once.