Elias Pryor's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

The diseased rabbit crouched among the roots. Twenty families backed away from the tree. Elias saw feet turning toward the road, toward wagons and doors. By morning they would be gone. He raised both hands and kept his wide smile fixed. "Wait," he said. "Look with me. This is no curse." No one waited. A father grabbed his son and pulled him toward the dark. Then a sound stopped every foot. A long, low growl rolled out of the desert night. Out of the black came a wolf. Blood streaked its gray coat. Blood dripped from its jaws. It moved slow into the candlelight and locked its eyes on the rabbit. The families froze. The wolf did not look at them. It looked only at the sick thing beneath the tree. Elias understood in one breath. Here was his reframe, walking on four legs. He lowered his hands and let his voice go soft. "You see it now," he said. "The sickness came out of the ground to test us. And the wild answers. The wolf comes to cleanse what crawled into our house." The wolf sprang. It snapped the rabbit up in its teeth and shook once. The small body went still. A woman gasped. A child hid his face. But no one ran now. They watched the bloody wolf carry the dead thing into the dark, and the roots stood empty. Elias walked to the base of the tree. He crouched where the rabbit had died and pressed his palm to the dirt. "The unclean thing is gone," he said. "We were not driven out. We were made clean. This ground kept us and answered for us." He stood and faced them. "Every soul here tonight belongs to this place now. One flock. You saw the proof with your own eyes." An old man knelt first. Then a mother pulled her children down beside her. One by one the twenty families lowered themselves in the candlelight. Their fear had turned to something Elias could use. He opened his ledger and held it against his chest like a shield. "Come each dawn," he said. "Come each dusk. The tree keeps its own." They stayed until the candles burned low. When they finally walked home, they walked slow, looking back at the branches, not fleeing them. Elias had held his flock together. Alone at last, he knelt again by the roots. His smile faded for the first time. In the dirt where the wolf had taken the rabbit, he saw a second burrow. Fresh soil. And around its dark mouth lay small tufts of torn gray fur. There had been more than one rabbit. There were more still under the tree. He closed the ledger. The families believed the ground had cleansed itself. He alone knew the sickness was still breeding beneath their feet.