Elsa Crane's Arc

Chapter 36 of 66

The morning after the arch, Elsa found Wren waiting outside the meeting hall with the ledger under her arm. Dahlia came up the path a moment later, hood low, hands red from the cold. The three of them had work ahead, and Elsa could feel the cracks already. Dahlia would not look at Wren. Wren would not look at anyone. Elsa needed trust between them before Nora went into the ground, or the ledger would split the day after. "We walk," a small voice said. It was Wren. She had not spoken in days. Dahlia's head snapped up. Wren pointed past the huts, toward the tree line where the pines thinned. "My house. I show you." Elsa understood then. The girl who kept coming back no matter where they left her was offering the place she came back from. Elsa nodded. Dahlia hesitated, then followed. Wren led them past the last fence and into the snow beyond the village edge. A moose stood among the pines, its fur stiff with frost, its stare fixed on them without blinking. Dahlia stopped. "That thing watches me at the passage," she said. Elsa had seen it too, the same moose that had witnessed her deal with Dahlia over Bodhi. "It's mine," Elsa said. "It watches what I ask it to watch." Wren kept walking. The moose turned its head to track them and did not move otherwise. The cabin sat in a hollow under the moose's line of sight. Moss covered the roof and dripped down the walls. Lightning bugs drifted at the eaves though the snow was deep. Wren pushed the door open. Inside, a single cot. A row of small carved birds on a shelf. A tin cup. Nothing else. Wren set the ledger on the cot. She turned to Dahlia. "You come here when you want to hurt him," she said. "Not the boy. Here. I sit with you." Dahlia's mouth opened. Elsa watched the woman's fists uncurl at her sides. Outside, no roots cracked. The pines held still. Dahlia said, "Why show me this." Wren answered, "So you know where I go. So you know I come back." Dahlia lowered herself onto the cot beside the ledger. She put her hand flat on the cover the way Wren had at the arch. She looked at Elsa. "I'll come here," she said. "When it gets bad. Before it gets bad." Elsa took the teal journal from her coat and wrote a new line beneath the others: Dahlia reports to Wren at the cabin. Wren keeps the door open. She handed the pen to each of them. Both touched the page. Outside, the moose lowered its head to the snow. Elsa closed the door behind them and started back for the village. Nora would be dead by dusk. The ledger had two hands on it now, and the hands would hold.