Elsa Crane's Arc

Chapter 62 of 66

The next morning Bodhi came into the hut with the new crown wrapped in cloth. He set it on the table beside the finished one Elsa had made for herself. He did not sit. He looked at her hands, which stayed still now only when she rested them on wool. Then he looked at her face. "You don't have long," he said. It was not a question. Elsa did not lie to him. "Four days." Bodhi nodded once. He pulled the chalk stub from his pocket and turned it between his fingers. "When you started here," he said, "the village brought food. Every house brought a dish. You stood at the door and smiled at each one as they came in." "I remember." "We should do it again," he said. "A pot luck. Same as the first one. Everyone brings something. You sit at the door." He paused. "You give me your smile in front of them. Out loud. Where they all see." Elsa understood at once. She had been sitting with the same problem for three days. If she collapsed in the hut alone, the warmth would look like a thing she lost, not a thing she gave. Bodhi had solved it while she slept. She beamed at him. Wide, round-cheeked, the smile she had used on every stranger who ever walked into the driftwood hut. His shoulders eased under the too-big parka. "That's a good idea," she said. "That's the right idea. It closes the rite where it started." "Tomorrow?" he asked. "Tomorrow." He ran to the door and called Charlie's name across the yard. Then Fern's. Then Clara's. Within the hour the plan moved through the village on other feet. Charlie kept the list of who would bring what. Fern walked to the schoolhouse mothers. Clara went house to house with Larissa. Nancy sent word to the elders' wives so none could claim they had not been asked. By dusk the answer came back through Jasper at the door. Every house had said yes. Forty-one dishes promised. Bread, stew, root pie, salted fish, honey cake. Elsa sat in her chair by the window. Bodhi came in with the reindeer's breath fogging behind him and stood at her knee. "I'll sit you at the door," he said. "I'll stand beside you. When the last one comes in, you smile at me. Then they'll all remember it." "Yes," Elsa said. She reached for his hand. Her fingers closed this time. She held on. "Three days," she said. "Then I have one left after. Enough." Bodhi did not cry. He set the wrapped crown beside her chair and went to help Charlie count the loaves. Elsa watched him go. The moment was chosen. The moment had a room and a door and forty-one witnesses. The gift would look like a gift.