Elsa Crane's Arc

Chapter 11 of 66

By mid-morning the square had emptied. The mothers had taken the boy home. The search party had gone to sleep. Elsa walked Bodhi to her meeting hall and sat him at the hearth with a cup of warm milk. The lantern rested on the table between them, dark now. Bodhi kept looking at it the way a hungry child looks at bread. She had promised him the passage. Before she paid that promise, she had to know who else had already paid him. She set out a piece of slate and a fresh stub of chalk. "Draw me the one on the lantern," she said. He drew the eight-pointed star without looking. "Now the ones on the walls down there." His hand moved again. Three more shapes. She had seen two of them scratched into the stone below the cellar. The third she had not seen at all. He drew it neatly, the way a child copies letters he has been shown. "Who taught you that last one?" she said. He shrugged. "The lady who brings the berries." Elsa kept her smile in place. "Brynn." "She leaves them on our step. She showed me on the flour on the counter. She said the shapes keep the house safe." He looked pleased with himself. "She said you'd like them." Elsa poured him more milk. Her hand was steady. So Brynn had been feeding the boy signs from a place Brynn should not know. Brynn, who had drunk the sleeping draught and smiled the same smile Elsa smiled. Brynn, who tended a blackberry arch at the edge of the village where neighbors she disliked stopped appearing. Elsa put on her robe and took Bodhi's hand. "Walk with me. We'll pick berries on the way." The wolf came out from under the table and followed. Snow muffled the path to the blackberry arch. Brynn was already there, cardigan buttoned, a basket at her hip, picking as if she had been waiting. She smiled when she saw them. Bodhi ran ahead and showed her his chalk. "He drew the third shape for me," Elsa said. "The one below the cellar. You've been down." Brynn did not stop picking. "Once. A long time before you sent me the draught." Her voice was soft as knitting. "I thought you'd want a partner who already knew the floor." "You taught a child my secrets before I could." "I taught him shapes. You promised him the room." Brynn placed a berry in Bodhi's palm. "We can share him, Elsa. He'll carry the warmth after us both." Elsa understood then. Brynn was not a rival for the crown. Brynn was crowning someone too. The tour Elsa had promised Bodhi would no longer be a gift. It would be a test — of which elder the boy already belonged to.