Delphine Fernside's Arc

Chapter 4 of 11

Della came out of the forest at dusk with empty hands and a head full of berries. She found Grampy where she knew he would be — on the wide wooden swing he had built at the edge of the trees, where he sat every evening she ran late. He had a half-carved spoon in his lap and a cup of tea balanced on the armrest. He looked up when she stepped out of the shadows and smiled like he had not been worried at all. She sat down beside him and told him everything in a rush. The patch was bigger than her basket. Bigger than ten baskets. She had gotten lost and the whistle had worked and a chickadee had shown her a path down through the rocks. She needed him to come see. She needed him to help her carry a whole patch home. Grampy listened without interrupting. When she finished, he set the spoon down. "Show me in the morning," he said. "Truly. First light." At sunrise they walked to his workshop behind the house — a squat little hut with a crooked chimney and tools hung on every beam. He filled a sack with twine, a folding knife, and two empty crates. Then he followed her into the trees. Della led him to the strawberry patch easily. That part she knew. But the hidden path the chickadee had shown her started somewhere above, in the deep woods, and she had only come down it, not up. She walked Grampy along the tree line and tried to remember. Every gap between trunks looked like the right one. None of them were. She pushed through ferns and doubled back twice. The sun climbed. Grampy waited without complaint, but the morning was burning off. She was ready to admit she had lost it when she saw the stones. Someone — or something — had stacked small pebbles into a tight spiral beside a mossy root. The pile was no taller than her knee. She had walked past it yesterday without noticing. Behind it, a thin gap opened between two trunks, and the ground inside the gap was flat and worn. Della crouched and pressed her hand to the stones. "Grampy. Here." He came up behind her and looked at the little cairn for a long moment. "Someone marked it for you," he said. "Honestly, that's a kindness. Let's see where it goes." They climbed. The path was the one she remembered — the worn steps, the moss, the rise above the trees. At the top Grampy stopped and looked down at the red dots far below. He whistled once, low. "That's a harvest," he said. "That's a real harvest." He turned the empty crates in his hands and his face changed. "Della. Two crates won't hold a tenth of it. We're going to need something else. And we'll need help carrying it."