Elsa Crane's Arc

Chapter 21 of 66

Elsa walked to the schoolhouse at first light. The crystal door glowed teal against the frost. She had bought Fern a month, and she had not yet told her the price. That would come. First she needed a public seat for Bodhi, before the elders picked one of their own sons and called it done. Fern opened the door with the key in her hand. Her strawberry dress was creased from sitting up all night. Bodhi slept on a cot by the stove, chalk still in his fist. Fern stepped outside and pulled the door closed behind her. "He didn't wake once," she said. "Wren sat on the step until dawn." "Good." Elsa took her arm and walked her under the vines, where the berries hung frozen. "The elders met last night without me. They want a naming by the solstice. If I don't set one, they will set their own." Fern's green eyes went sharp. "A ceremony. For Bodhi." "In the meeting hut. Jasper stands beside him as regent. I place my flower crown on the boy's head in front of every household. Once the village sees it, the elders can't undo it without breaking their own custom." "They'll come if you call them," Fern said. "They still love you." "They love the smile. I need them to love the boy by the time they leave the room." Elsa looked at her. "You'll teach him what to say. Short words. Warm ones. He can lie well enough to sound honest now." Fern almost smiled. Then she didn't. "And the other thing." Elsa had rehearsed it on the walk. It still cut. "The creature marked the debt to you. I moved the date to the next moon. That gives us weeks, not hours." She waited. Fern's hand tightened on the key. "I won't let him have you. But I need his eye off this door while you keep teaching the boy." "How." "A decoy. Nora's ledger draws him. I'll have her write a fresh name — someone already dying, someone the village won't miss for long — and circle it as mine. He follows my choices. He'll turn toward that name and leave your threshold alone." Fern breathed out. "That buys the lessons." "That buys the lessons." A pale shape moved at the edge of the pines. The arctic wolf stood between two trunks, blue eyes steady on them, frost in her fur. She had come the last three mornings. Elsa did not know yet whose side the wolf was on, only that she watched Bodhi's door. "Call the village for the day after tomorrow," Elsa said. "Bake something. Make it feel like a festival, not a funeral." Two days later the hut was full. Elsa lifted the flower crown from her own hair and set it on Bodhi's. The room went quiet, then clapped. The elders clapped last, but they clapped. It was done. The boy was bound to the seat in every memory in the room. Outside, snow began. The wolf was gone from the trees.