Elsa Crane's Arc

Chapter 26 of 66

The morning after the miller's boy returned the bear, Elsa sat with Clara and Fern at the vine-woven table in the cottage. Bottles of tincture rattled when Clara set down her mug. "Four children love him," Elsa said. "Their mothers do not. A crown on a boy no parent knows is a crown made of paper." Fern turned the crystal key in her palm. "The children want to see each other again. Use that." "A gathering," Clara said. "Not a ceremony. Everyone brings a dish. The parents come because their children beg them. He walks among them without a speech." Elsa considered it. A crowning needed a memory the wives could tell each other later. Not a story about the elder's chosen boy. A story about their own child laughing at something he did. "In the lane behind the meeting hall," Elsa said. "Open air. No door for anyone to feel trapped behind. Clara, you invite the mothers. Fern, you bring the children first so the parents follow." She pulled on her wool coat and went out to the pines. The pale wolf was already waiting, its blue eyes steady on her. Elsa knelt in the snow. "I'm sending him into a crowd tomorrow," she said. "Tell me if I'm feeding him to it." The wolf stepped close and pressed its forehead to her shoulder. Then it turned and looked toward the village. Not warning. Watching. "Good," she said. The next afternoon they set trestle tables in the lane. Clara's stew. Fern's berry bread. A neighbor brought pickled beets before anyone asked. The Peters girl arrived first and grabbed the boy's sleeve and pulled him to the twins. The miller's boy showed him how his father shelled walnuts with a hammer. Bodhi laughed, then covered his mouth like laughing was still new. Mothers came in twos. They stood at the edges with their arms crossed. Elsa did not go near them. She sat on a stool by the hall wall and watched. The Peters girl's mother crossed the lane first. She knelt beside her daughter, who was showing Bodhi how to braid a bit of ribbon from her sleeve. The girl said something Elsa could not hear. The mother laughed. Then the mother touched Bodhi's cheek with the back of her hand like she'd done to her own child a thousand times. The cobbler's wife saw it. She came next, with a plate. Then the miller's wife. Then two more. A woman Elsa barely knew set a jar of honey by the boy's elbow and told him to take it home. By dusk the tables were half empty and the boy had a smear of stew on his chin no one had told him to wipe. Clara found Elsa at the wall. "They saw him," Clara said. "Not the crown. Him." Elsa let out a breath she'd been holding for weeks. The village had a memory of the boy now. One they made themselves. Then the pale wolf stepped out from between two houses at the end of the lane, in full view of every mother still standing there.