Elowyn's Arc

Chapter 10 of 12

The seam spat Elowyn and Tavian back into sunlight, and the warmth felt like a first breath after a long dive. But relief did not last. Elowyn opened her herbarium on the grass and turned the pages. Each pressed bloom sat in place, but the spaces beside them were empty. She had the flowers. She did not have what they were for. Her grandmother's journal was gone now, and with it the symbols that named each forgotten use. "I have the collection," she said. "But it's just a book of dead petals unless I know what they did." Tavian sat beside her and checked his compass out of habit. The needle held still. "So we find someone who remembers," he said. "You know one who reads that kind of lore." Elowyn did know. Morrowyn had translated the journal once, before it was lost. Morrowyn was the small godling of Small Beginnings, the one who woke the seed Elowyn had sacrificed her rare bloom to save. That gift had left Morrowyn owing her a debt. But godlings did not answer twice for free, and Elowyn had nothing left to trade. They found Morrowyn crouched over a cracked pot, coaxing a green shoot upright with one finger. Her leaf-hair curled around a coral flower, and her amber eyes flicked up, then down to the shoot again. "You came back," she said. "Small. Good. The seed you woke is walking now." She wiggled her fingers like little legs. "I need help," Elowyn said. She held out the herbarium. "The blooms are here. But their uses are gone. I lost the journal." Morrowyn tilted her head. "Once," she said. "I read it once. A reading is a giving. Givings cost." She turned back to her shoot. Elowyn's chest tightened. This was the wall she'd feared. She had no charm, no necklace, no journal. Then she looked at the shoot, thin and leaning. "Your seed woke because of my bloom," she said quietly. "You called it a debt. I'm calling it in." Morrowyn went still. Her ears drooped, then lifted. For a godling, a debt was not a feeling. It was a fact, heavy as a stone. "A fair pull," she said. "Yes. One reading, paid." She patted the soil, then stood on her tiny vine-wrapped feet. "Open it. Slow. I don't remember fast." Elowyn spread the herbarium across her knees. Morrowyn touched each pressed flower and named its old work. This one calmed fever. This one dyed cloth the color of dusk. This one, the pale bloom, ended sleep. Elowyn wrote each use in her own hand, filling the empty spaces at last. When Morrowyn touched the final page, she paused. "One is missing," she said. "Silphium. The eaten one. It has no bloom here. You can't name a use you don't hold." The debt was paid. The herbarium was nearly whole. But one page stayed blank, waiting for a flower that no one alive had ever pressed.