Aster Alloway's Arc

Chapter 3 of 26

Aster made it three steps down the street before she turned back. The compass still pulled toward the hills. But through her shop window she saw her blooms. Rows of them, glowing soft in the morning. She could not leave them. A week untended meant every flower dead. The bloom she chased would take days to reach. She stood on the cobbles with the heavy pack and had no answer. A voice cut in. "You look like someone about to make a bad choice." Zinnia Chatterwick leaned in the doorway of the shop across the way. She was a teenager with pink-and-blue hair that stuck out in every direction. Aster knew her shop. Three sales a week, if that. The candles that smelled like burnt cereal. Aster had waved at her once. Zinnia had waved back and talked for twenty minutes. "I have to leave," Aster said. "For days. My flowers won't last." Zinnia crossed the street without being asked. She pressed her face to the glass and looked at the blooms. "Water them. Trim the dead ones. Talk to them so they don't get lonely." She shrugged. "I can do all that." Aster hesitated. "You'd mind my shop?" "My shop sells nothing. Yours has customers." Zinnia said it plain, no self-pity. "I'm good at keeping people talking. They'll come back if someone's here." "I can't pay much." "Then pay me in a reason to get out of bed." Zinnia glanced back at her own dim doorway. "Mine's about to close anyway. Three weeks, give or take. I stopped counting." She said it like a weather report, then turned back to the flowers. Aster felt something loosen in her chest. She opened the shop and led Zinnia inside. She showed her the watering cans, the trimming shears, the pots that needed shade. She pointed to the ones that bloomed at night and needed no light. Zinnia repeated each thing back once, then got it right. "Some customers I wave to," Aster said. "There's one I don't. The painter across the road. Leave her be." "The one with the dog and the tired face." Zinnia nodded. "Got it." Aster set the keys in Zinnia's palm. Her hands were steady now. The blooms would live. The shop would stay open. She had bought herself the days she needed. Zinnia walked her to the door. "Bring back something worth all this," she said. Then, dry: "Or at least don't die. Bad for business." Aster laughed. It surprised her. She shouldered the pack and stepped into the street. The compass warmed against her chest, still pointing past the city, into the wild groves. Nothing held her here anymore. She could finally go.