Delila's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

The baker's coin still sat warm in Delila's palm the next morning. She looked at her shrine in daylight. Cracked stone. No roof. No door. A seeker could pass it and never guess a school lived here. By noon the baker returned with two friends, hungry to learn. They stood in the open road, with no walls to hold them. A cold wind pushed through, and the three shivered and glanced back the way they came. Delila saw it plain. Without shelter, they would scatter before she said a word. "Wait," she told them. She gripped her staff. The cracked compass spun fast, then stopped. It pointed down the road, firm, for the first time she could remember. Delila frowned. Her compass never pointed anywhere. "It seems we take a wrong road," she said. "Follow." She led them where the compass aimed. The baker grumbled. "We came to learn, not walk." "You'll learn by walking," she said. The road bent and climbed. Then it opened onto a clearing, and the seekers stopped dead. A building stood there. Sturdy wooden walls, honey-brown and clean. Bright windows framed in red, green, and blue. A small porch sheltered two wide doors. Above the door hung a plain sign: School. It looked as if it had waited years for someone to walk up the wrong road and find it. "Whose is this?" the baker whispered. Delila stepped onto the porch. The boards held firm under her staff. No lock barred the doors. Inside, dust lay thick on empty benches, but the roof was sound and the walls kept out the wind. She laughed, dry and surprised. Her method had misdirected her straight to the thing she needed. "Mine, now," she said. "And yours, while you learn in it." The three seekers filed in out of the cold. They wiped benches with their sleeves. The baker tested a window, and it swung open smooth. For the first time, no wind could scatter them. They sat, and they stayed, and they looked at Delila for the lesson. She planted her staff on the dusty floor. She had walls now. She had a roof and a door and a sign seekers could read. The compass had done its strange work. But standing in the quiet room, Delila felt the next trouble settle on her. An empty school was easy to fill with three. Word would spread. The baker would tell others, and others would tell more. Soon dozens would climb the wrong road to this door. She looked at the few benches, the single room. Three seekers fit. Thirty would not. She had solved the problem of walls only to face a harder one. Now that she had a home, she had to make it big enough for everyone her method would send.