Clem Burrow's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Clem Burrow counted the animals on her doorstep and lost the number at thirty. A fox with a torn ear paced by the river. Three squirrels shivered in a basket. And at the front, worst of all, a kitten with torn dragonfly wings lay too still in the mud. Clem wanted a real clinic someday, a place where no hurt critter waited its turn to die. But she had one cottage, one table, and one pair of hands. She carried the winged kitten inside first. Her badger trotted at her heels, nosing the door shut against the cold. The cottage held one lamp and one narrow table. She set the kitten down and cleaned the torn wing with a rag. Behind her, the door thumped. More critters. The fox scratched. A crow tapped the window. She could not treat them one at a time. The sickest ones would be dead by morning. She pressed her hands to the table and made herself think. The problem was not skill. The problem was room. She had no spare cot, no second table, nothing to lay the waiting ones on so she could reach them all. Then she remembered the old woman who lived up the river. Clem wrapped the kitten in her scarf and ran. Maple Cotter wove baskets no one else in Gnarlroot could make, and she made big ones. Strong ones. Clem had watched her carry firewood in baskets a grown badger could sleep in. She found Maple at her loom, bark-brown hands moving over the reeds. The old woman did not look up. "You're breathing hard," Maple said. "So it's trouble." "I need baskets. Big ones. As many as you can spare." Clem held out the kitten. "I've got thirty animals dying in the mud and no beds." Maple set down her reed. She looked at the torn wing, then at Clem's muddy boots. "Baskets I have. Beds they can be." She jerked her chin at a stack against the wall. "Take them. But baskets won't fix your real trouble, girl." "Which is?" "You keep saying yes. One day the yes will bury you." Maple pressed a reed into Clem's free hand. "Learn to weave. Then you don't need my legs to carry you." Clem stacked six wide baskets on her back and ran home before dark. She lined them with clover from the patch by her step, soft and dry. One by one she lifted the waiting critters off the mud and into their own soft beds. The fox. The squirrels. The crow. Now she could reach each one in turn. By lamplight she stitched the kitten's wing, and it began to purr. The doorstep was clear. But Clem sat among the crowded baskets and understood something. Six baskets held tonight. Tomorrow there would be forty animals. She could not keep running to Maple. She needed a place built for this. A real one.