Blush Rosewood's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

Word of the sold-out stand traveled fast, but not only to people. Blush walked out at dawn to cut a fresh round of bundles and stopped short at the edge of her beds. Hoof prints pocked the soft dirt. The sage was chewed to stubs. Half the plantain stalks lay bent and stripped of their brown-tipped heads. The yellow flower spikes she counted on for tea were snapped clean. She knelt and pressed her hand flat to a print. Small. A young one, and not alone. She followed the tracks to the far corner of the garden. A young doe stood there, head low, nosing the last of her marjoram. The deer looked up, ears twitching, and did not run. It chewed once, slow, then stepped back into the tall grass beyond the fence line. Blush counted the damage in her head. Three days of harvest, maybe four. If the herd came back tonight, the stand would sit empty by the weekend. She found Bear at the barn, filling a bucket. "Deer got into the beds," she said. "They'll be back at dusk. I need a fence. A real one. Tall enough they won't jump." Bear set the bucket down. "How tall?" "Six feet. All the way around the herb rows." He wiped his hands on his jeans. "I've got cedar posts behind the barn. Wire in the loft. We can start after breakfast." They worked through the morning. Bear dug the post holes and Blush held each cedar upright while he tamped the dirt. The sun climbed. Sweat ran down her back. By noon they had the corners set and the long side strung with wire. Kitten brought them water in a jar and stayed to hand her mother staples from a tin. By late afternoon the wire ran the full perimeter. Bear hung a pale pink iron gate at the front, a piece Blush had kept in the shed for a year without a place to put it. Climbing roses already twined up one side. Bear tested the latch twice. "That'll hold," he said. "Unless one gets over the top." "Six feet," Blush said. "They won't try." She waited at the kitchen window after supper. The light went blue, then gray. Around nine, three shapes moved along the tree line. The young doe stepped out first. It walked to the wire, lifted its nose, and pressed against the fence. The wire held. It circled once, tried the far corner, then turned and led the others back into the trees. Blush let out the breath she had been holding. The beds were safe for tonight. But she had seen the deer test the corner, and she had seen how thin the wire looked against a full-grown buck. Tomorrow she would need to think about what else the herd might try, and what the rest of the garden still had no fence to guard.