Elsa Crane's Arc

Chapter 14 of 66

A week after Jasper set his shadow over the boy, Elsa began to hear the wrong kind of talk in the lane. Not about Brynn. About her. Two women at the well went quiet when she passed. The blacksmith's wife asked, too lightly, who Elsa meant to name. The village had started counting her days. If she waited too long, they would pick for her. If she named Bodhi now, they would laugh a child out of the hut. She needed a test the village could see. Not a crowning. A showing. Something that let Bodhi stand in front of them and be measured, and let her stand back. She walked to the Vance house at first light. Jasper was already on the step, carving. Bodhi sat between his boots with chalk on his knuckles. The big man looked up. Elsa nodded once, and Jasper stood and moved off to the fence without a word. He had learned her signals faster than any grown man she'd trained. "Bodhi," she said. "There's a sick ewe at the cottage past the pines. The one in the tree, with the green door. I need someone to carry broth to the woman who keeps it. Can you do that alone?" He nodded. He did not ask why she couldn't send a grown person. That was the answer she wanted. She gave him the covered pot and watched him go. Then she sent Wren after him at ten paces. The porcelain-faced girl in the stiff white dress fell in behind him without a sound, her black button eyes fixed on his back. Wren would tell Elsa what the boy did when no one he trusted was watching. Elsa waited by the meeting hall until dusk. The pale wolf lay across her feet, ears turning at every sound on the road. When Wren came back, she came alone, and she came smiling the small closed smile Elsa had taught herself to read. "He gave her the pot," Wren said. "She asked him who sent him. He said, I did." Elsa closed her eyes. He was seven. He had claimed the errand as his own in front of a grown woman he didn't know. He had lied cleanly, without flinching, to protect Elsa's name. It was exactly what she would have done. It was exactly what the village would smell on him within a year and hate him for. He was not ready to be crowned. He was ready to be hidden. She stood up. The wolf stood with her. She would not name a successor this winter. She would name a regent — Jasper, whom the adults feared enough to obey — and let him hold the seat until Bodhi's shoulders caught up with his mouth. It bought her time. It also meant she would have to live long enough to give it.