Bastien's Arc

Chapter 3 of 9

Bastien walked south for three days before the road bent toward home. He smelled the smoke before he saw the village. Charred beams jutted from the ground like broken ribs. A merchant cart lay split in the road, cloth and spilled fruit rotting in the sun. Crusader banners had been torn down and trampled. He stepped between the ruins, calling soft greetings. No one answered. Then a figure burst from behind a blackened cottage and ran straight into him. A teenage boy with dark curls, his face streaked with ash. Fallon. The son of his old friends. Fallon clung to him and shook. "The house was wrong when I came back," he said. "They were already cold." Bastien held him tighter. In the boy's fist was a small carved wooden bird, scorched along one wing. His mother had kept it on the windowsill. Bastien remembered the shape of it. He remembered her hands. "You come with me," Bastien said. "You stay with me now." Fallon nodded against his shoulder. Bastien took the boy's hand and turned away from the ruins. His garden waited somewhere ahead, and now he had someone to bring home.