Eden Riverwallow's Arc

Chapter 1 of 18

Eden knelt on the cottage porch with a paring knife and a pear, and tried to think of one gift that would not insult a thing older than the wood. The pear was bruised. The knife was hers. Neither belonged to the watcher at the treeline. She had felt him again at dawn, a weight between two birches, patient as rent coming due. She had moved into the cottage in spring because no one else would claim it. Something had died in the front room before her; she knew the moment she crossed the threshold, the way other people knew a stove was hot. The house had said her name that first night, quiet, from the rafters. She had answered. She had been trying to earn the answer back ever since. Now there was him, too, watching from between the trunks, and she wanted him the way she wanted the house to keep speaking. The black cat pushed the door open with his shoulder and sat beside the pear. His eyes were the color of shallow ice. He did not blink at her. He blinked at the woods. "He can take the pear off the tree himself," Willow said. She stood at Eden's elbow, transparent as breath on glass, lace hem drifting an inch above the boards. "He can take the tree. Try again." "I know." Eden set the knife down. "That's the problem. Anything I bring, he already owns." "Then don't bring a thing." Eden looked at her oldest friend, who had been dead six years and still stood closer to her than anyone living. Willow's face was flat, patient, the way it had been the last afternoon Eden had lied to it. "Meaning what," Eden said. "Meaning you keep offering him apples off his own orchard." Willow's voice did not soften. "Give him the one thing out here he can't reach." The cat stood. He walked three steps toward the trees and stopped, tail curled, waiting. Eden understood then. The cottage knew her name because she had given it. The watcher did not. She had been treating courtship like tribute, and tribute was what a landlord took. She stepped off the porch in her boots. She left the knife. She left the pear. She walked to the edge of the yard where the grass went to moss and stopped where she could see the shape of him between two trunks, tall, still, listening. "My name is Eden Riverwallow," she said. "I moved into the house that already knew me. I want to know you the same way." The woods held their breath. Then a branch bent, though no wind moved it, and bent again, lower, closer, an answer shaped like a step forward. Behind her, the cottage door clicked shut on its own. She was outside now. Whatever came next would meet her in his trees, not hers.