Elowyn's Arc

Chapter 5 of 12

Back at her cottage, Elowyn spread the herbarium open on her worktable. The fresh bloom lay pressed on its page. But the page stayed unfinished. Beside it sat her grandmother's floral journal, opened to the notes about this flower. The notes made no sense. Her grandmother had not written plant names. She had drawn tiny symbols instead. Loops, dots, a curved line like a hook. Elowyn had memorized every one. She still could not read them. "You look like someone who has stared too long at one thing," Tavian said. He leaned in the doorway, satchel over his shoulder. He crossed to the table and studied the symbols. "These aren't map marks. I'd know those." He tapped the hooked line. "This one almost looks like a plant. But it isn't any I've charted." "They're uses," Elowyn said. "They have to be. She wrote what the flower was good for. Food, medicine, something. But I can't match them to anything." She pressed her palms flat on the table. Without the uses, the page was just a picture. Her whole herbarium meant nothing if she only pressed blooms and never learned what they did. A small voice spoke from the windowsill. "That one means waking." Elowyn turned. A tiny godling perched among her potted seedlings. Leaves grew from her head like hair, and a coral flower bloomed at her crown. Morrowyn. Elowyn's friend, the godling of small beginnings. Elowyn had not heard her arrive. Morrowyn was watching a seedling, not the journal. "Waking?" Elowyn said. Morrowyn pointed one small finger at the hooked symbol. "That's a seed shape. Half-open." She tilted her head. "Your grandmother drew growing words. Not people words." She paused, distracted by a curling sprout. "Gods write like this. I read it every day." Elowyn's breath caught. "You can read them?" "Some." Morrowyn hopped down onto the table. She was smaller than the journal. She walked across the page, touching each symbol. "This dot means quiet. This loop means it holds sleep in a thing. The hook means it ends the sleep." She looked up. "Your flower wakes seeds that won't wake. It starts what has stopped." Elowyn grabbed her pen. She copied the meanings beside each symbol, her hand steady now. Wakes dormant seeds. Ends long sleep. The page filled. For the first time, the herbarium held not just a bloom, but what the bloom could do. Then she stopped. Her pen hovered. "Seeds that won't wake," she repeated. She thought of extinct plants. Silphium. Every lost species she wanted to find. A flower that ended long sleep could wake seeds thought dead forever. Morrowyn looked at her with wide amber eyes. "I have a seed that won't wake," she said softly. "It's dying. Slow." She twisted her small hands. "Your grandmother knew how to wake sleepers. But your flower is only one bloom. And I don't know if one is enough."