Ellen's Arc

Chapter 39 of 45

The road was closed, and that was the problem. Ellen stood at the crater's edge the next morning and understood what she had done. No wagon could cross the pit. No horse. Vincent had driven off before dawn, and the crater sealed him out along with the hunters. Inside the walls sat six women and empty shelves. The cellar cache was gone. The last water barrel stood a quarter full. She had built a wall no enemy could pass, and no food could pass either. She walked the pit's rim and measured it with her eyes. Eight feet across at the narrow point. Loose dirt, no footing. A person could climb down and up again, slow, but not a loaded wagon. She had traded starvation for a siege and won the siege. Now the siege won back. Brennan sat his horse beyond the pit, watching. He had lost three men and gained patience. "You closed your own gate," he called. "Now nothing comes in." He did not smile. "We wait. You get thin. Then we walk in over your bones." He turned his horses and rode back to the flat, in no hurry now. Ellen went back inside and thought. The road was dead. But the salt beds were not. She had crossed them once on the wide, low wagon that skimmed where horses sank. That wagon still stood in the yard. If a loaded wagon could cross the flats, it could reach her from the far side, away from Brennan and away from the crater entirely. She sent two of her steadiest women out at dusk with the low wagon and every coin the house held. They rode the salt beds by starlight, wide of the road, and Brennan's watch never turned that way. His eyes stayed on the pit. He guarded the door she had shut and forgot the ground behind him. The women reached a trading camp past the flats and traded coin for grain, dried meat, and four barrels of water. They loaded the wagon low and rode back across the salt before dawn. The frame held. The wheels floated where hooves would have gone under. By first light the wagon rolled into the yard. Ellen and the others hauled the barrels down and stacked the sacks against the wall. Six women who had counted their last bread now had a month of it. The crater still sealed the road. Brennan still watched the pit. He did not know the house behind it had just been fed. Ellen climbed to a high window and looked down at him. He thought hunger would open her door for him. It would not. She had found a second door he could not see, and she would use it again. But the coins were gone now. The next crossing would cost more than money, and she did not yet know what.