Elsa Crane's Arc

Chapter 61 of 66

Morning came gray through the hut's small window. Elsa reached for the crown vines she kept in a basket by her chair and tried to twist a new start. Her fingers would not close. The vine slid free three times. She looked at her hands and saw them shake in a way she could not stop. Bodhi needed his own crown to give someday. Without one, the warmth had no vessel to pass into. She set the vines down and called for him. Bodhi came in with chalk dust on his knuckles. His reindeer waited outside the door, breath steaming. He sat at her knee. "Look at me," Elsa said. She lifted the crown from his head and turned it in the light. The vines held. Blackberries and strawberries still clung to the weave. "I made this by hand. Not because I had to. Because the warmth follows the hands that made it. When your time comes, you pass the crown to the one who follows you. But you have to weave it yourself. Nobody else can." Bodhi looked at the crown, then at her fingers on the arm of the chair. He saw them shake. He reached and took her hand and held it flat. "Show me how to start," he said. Elsa placed three vines across his palm. She showed him the first twist, then the second. Her hand guided his once, then fell away. He got it wrong. He tried again. On the fourth try the vines held their bend. He stood. "Wait." He went to the door and spoke to the reindeer, then called across the yard. Within the hour Jasper, Fern, Clara, Dahlia, Nancy, Wren, and Charlie stood inside the driftwood hut. The room smelled of wet wool and bread. "Each of you did something to me," Bodhi said. His voice was smaller than it had been at the crowning, but steady. "I want each of you to add one piece to this crown. So when I give it away someday, the warmth in it is not only mine." He held out the started weave. Jasper twisted in a strip of pale wood he shaved from his pocket knife. Fern added a length of blue thread from her cuff. Clara pressed in a sprig of dried strawberry vine. Dahlia hesitated, then wove in a strand of her own dark hair. Nancy added a green leaf from her cardigan pocket. Wren pushed in a small iron nail. Charlie tied a bit of lavender ribbon from Lynn's hem. Bodhi worked the pieces in as they came. When the ring was closed he went outside. He came back holding a shed antler tip his reindeer had dropped in the yard. He set it upright at the crown's front and bound it fast. He held the finished crown up for Elsa to see. Her hands were still. His were not. "It's ready," he said. "For whoever comes after me." Elsa nodded once and let out a breath she had held for weeks.