Delia Prance's Arc

Chapter 26 of 59

At dawn Delia walked to the finished house alone. Blossoms climbed its porch rails and framed every window. Forty beds waited inside, empty and clean. She wanted to see it once more before the king came. But near the door she stopped. A tree stood there that had not stood there yesterday. It was a weeping willow, its leaves pale as bone. Long branches hung to the grass and swayed with no wind. Among them, one fruit glowed like a coal. Delia stepped closer. The fruit gave off a soft light against the dim morning. The black fox slipped from the willow's shadow. Delia knew the animal well; it had walked her fields for weeks, nosing out roots and leaves she needed for medicine. Now it sat beneath the strange tree and looked up at her. Its amber eyes held her the way a patient's eyes hold a healer before a hard truth. "You came with this tree," Delia said. The fox rose. It stepped to the trunk, then back to her, then to the trunk again. It stopped under the glowing fruit and looked up, then at her. The meaning was plain. Eat. Delia hesitated. She knew fruit that killed. She grew nightshade herself and never forgot its danger. She reached up and touched the fruit. It was warm. The warmth ran down her arm and settled in her chest, gentle, not sharp. The fox pressed its head against her leg. It had never led her wrong. Every plant it found had healed someone. She trusted its nose more than her own hands. So she picked the fruit and bit into it. Sweetness filled her mouth. Then something opened behind her eyes. She saw every plant she had ever grown, and every one she had ever wanted and lacked. The drying root for lungs. The nightshade. Herbs with no names she had never held. She knelt and pressed her palm to the bare grass. Green broke through the dirt under her hand. Stems rose. Leaves spread. A patch of healing herb she needed spread across the ground in one breath. Delia pulled her hand back and stared. She thought of a rarer plant, one Bram had once named for her, and pressed down again. It grew. She sat back on her heels, shaking. She could grow anything now. Any medicine, any root, any leaf. No trade with Bram. No empty market. No sick person turned away for want of a plant. The fox sat beside the willow, calm, as if its work was done. Delia looked at the forty beds through the open door, then at the ground she could now fill with any cure the wounded needed. She also know if anyone found out about her new gift they would try to use her. So the only person who she trusted to tell was her husband Nick. The king would come today. The nobles would come with him, hungry for what she made. But now what she made had no limit. She stood, brushed the dirt from her knees, and knew the ground under her feet had changed for good.