Clover willow's Arc

Chapter 2 of 20

The foxcat slept on a bed of moss beneath the willow. The guardian knelt over it, one hand cupped above the broken leg. He asked Clover for bindweed to wrap the bone. She reached for her basket and stopped cold. It was empty. She had brought nothing. No cloth, no salve, no herbs. She had left home to win his heart, not to heal. "I don't have anything," she said. Her voice was small. "I came with an empty basket." The guardian looked up. "Then we gather what the forest gives." He named what he needed: yarrow for the wound, willow bark for the pain, moss to hold the splint. "But I can't leave the animal. Its heart is racing. If I stop, it may not last the night." Clover understood. He needed her hands somewhere else, in the dark, alone. She stood. "Tell me where." "Downslope, near the water. Move quietly. Not everything out there is kind." His eyes held hers a moment. "Come back to me." She went. The night pressed close. Her rabbit ears turned at every crack of twig. She found yarrow by the stream and stripped bark from a fallen branch. Then a low growl froze her. Across the water stood a huge black wolf on two legs, golden eyes burning. A crescent mark glowed on its raised paw. It watched her, not moving. Clover did not run. She had carried a broken thing before. Slowly she set the herbs down and raised empty hands. "I only need to pass," she whispered. "I'm healing something small." A voice spoke behind the wolf. "He won't hurt you unless you show fear." A woman stepped from the ferns. Blond hair fell past her waist. A red-striped fox tail swept the ground behind her, and fox ears twitched atop her head. She rested one hand on the wolf's shoulder, and the growl died. "I'm the one who feeds him. You're the girl who follows the guardian." "You know him?" Clover asked. "Everyone in this forest knows him." The fox-woman's amber eyes moved over Clover, weighing her. "Few climb his tree twice." She knelt and gathered a fistful of green moss, then held it out. "For the splint. You forgot it." Clover took the moss. Her hands shook. "Thank you." "Don't thank me. Prove you belong there." The fox-woman rose. "He gives his trust once. Waste it and you won't get near him again." She turned into the dark, the wolf padding after her. Clover climbed back with a full basket. The guardian looked up when she knelt beside him. She pressed the yarrow to the wound and bound the leg with moss and bark. His hand covered hers to tie the knot. "You came back," he said. "I always will," she answered. The foxcat's breathing slowed and steadied. But Clover's mind stayed on the fox-woman's warning, and on the question she now carried: what did she have to prove, and to whom?