Calla Thorne's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Calla Thorne pressed one bare foot to the market floor and watched a crocus punch up through the frost. It bloomed purple in a heartbeat. Then it froze solid and shattered when her toe grazed it. She had done this a thousand times. She still hated it. Somewhere in the ice under her skin was the cure, and she meant to find it before her hands ruined every living thing she loved. The market hall stood quiet at dawn. Bundled herbs hung from the rafters. Bright cloths draped the empty stalls. Frost rimed the baskets of frozen fruit. Calla lived here alone in the back room, mixing salves nobody understood how she made. She kept her linen wraps loose because bloom-heat still singed the cloth. White streaked her dark hair. She had stopped covering it years ago. A cough came from the corner where she kept the child. Calla crossed the floor fast. Flowers erupted at each step and cracked behind her. In a nest of blankets sat Calla's foundling, the girl she had dug from a snowdrift one winter. Calla had named her Calla too, after herself, because she had no one else. The child's toes had gone black with frost that first night. Calla had saved the feet. She had never been sure she saved the rest. "You're cold," Calla said. She pressed her palm to the girl's forehead and forgot, too late, what her touch did. Nothing froze. The girl's skin stayed warm under Calla's hand. For the first time in years, no bloom, no ice. Calla pulled back her hand and stared at it. She touched the girl's cheek again. Warm. Steady. Alive. The freeze that ruled every other living thing did not reach this child. The girl opened her eyes. "You're doing the flowers again," she said, and pointed at the shattered petals across the floor. She smiled like it was a game. Calla's throat tightened. She had believed the snowdrift gave the child a curse like her own. She had watched the girl for signs of the cold power for years. She had been wrong. The child was not frostborn. The child was the opposite. Whatever lived in this girl swallowed Calla's freeze whole. "Give me your hand," Calla said. The girl obeyed. Calla laced their fingers and stepped onto the frosted stone. A daisy shoved up through the ice. It bloomed white. It stayed white. It did not freeze. Calla's breath caught. Nine years she had hunted a cure in glacier moss and old recipes. It had been sleeping in her own back room, coughing under a blanket. "Does it hurt?" the girl asked. "No," Calla said. "Not when you hold on." Then the girl's small hand went limp in hers. The daisy stayed alive, but the child had gone gray and still, breathing shallow. Whatever she took from Calla, it was taking something back.