Elsa Crane's Arc

Chapter 46 of 66

Elsa did not sleep. The elders had called the vote for noon. If Nancy walked to the meeting hall at that hour, the elders would bar the door and swear her in against an empty chair. She needed the village in the room before the elders arrived, and she needed Bodhi to be the one who put Nancy there. At first light, Bodhi crossed the frost to her door. He wore his brown parka and held a stub of chalk. His face was set in a way she had not seen before. "I heard them at the well last night," Bodhi said. "They mean to take your seat. I'm calling a town meeting. Before theirs. I want Nancy named where everyone can see." Elsa looked at him. He was small in the doorway. He was also the ledger keeper, and the wolf's boy, and the village's crowned child. She stepped aside and let him in. "Say it your own way," she told him. "I'll stand behind you." Bodhi went to Jasper first, then Clara, then Fern. Fern rang the schoolhouse bell at seven — three long pulls, the call the village used for births and fires. Mothers came out in their aprons. Fathers came from the sheds. By the time the elders heard the bell, half of Alpenglow was already walking toward the meeting hall. Elsa reached the hall behind the crowd. Nancy stood at the front step in her purple cardigan, a stack of readers still under her arm as if she had come straight from the shelves. Her white hair was uncombed. Her green eyes moved across the faces of the children and stopped on Bodhi. "You called me," Nancy said to him. Not to Elsa. "I'm here." Bodhi climbed the step. He did not use the chalk. He spoke plainly. "Elsa's chair needs filling. I've chosen Nancy Whitmore. Jasper stands with me. Clara stands with me. Fern stands with me. The wolf stands with me. Elsa stands with me." He looked out. "Who stands against?" Larissa Miller stepped forward and put her hand on Nancy's arm. The cobbler's wife did the same. Then a dozen more. No one spoke against. The elders arrived at a run. Three of them, red-faced, the loud cousin among them. They saw the crowd and stopped at the edge. "The vote is at noon," the cousin said. "The vote already happened," Bodhi said. "You're late." Nancy climbed to the chair inside the hall. She sat down in it without ceremony and opened one of her readers on her lap, as if the room were a library and the children were waiting. Elsa watched from the doorway. The seat was filled by a grandmother the village loved. The elders had nothing to swear anyone into. Four days remained. Outside, the cousin was already whispering to the man beside him. Elsa marked the sound. A seated enemy was worse than a standing one — and he had just become one.