Fawn's Arc

Chapter 9 of 13

Spot picked up the ring from the desk and looked at Fawn. She tipped her head toward the garden shed at the edge of the yard. Fawn followed her past the smiling scarecrow planted between the rows, its wooden arms wide. Spot stopped beside it and turned to face him. "In here," she said, and pushed open the shed door. Inside it was quiet. Spot set the ring on an upturned crate. Beside it she laid a small chip of golden stone — a shard that had broken from the band long ago, she said, and she had kept it in her pocket all this time. "One promise," she said. "Just one. Not about fries. Not about staying out of trouble. About this." She touched the ring. "You keep it safe. You don't lose it. You don't trade it for anything. Ever." Fawn opened his mouth and the easy yes was already there, the way it always was. He stopped it. He looked at her tired face, and the shard, and the ring that had been her grandmother's before this place had a name he knew. "I promise," he said. Slow. Once. He picked up the ring and closed his hoof around it tight. "If I break this, I lose you. I know." Spot watched him a long moment. Then she nodded — small, settled. "Then it's yours to carry," she said. She pressed the shard into his other hoof and closed his fingers over it. The door stayed open behind them. Fawn stood very still, holding both pieces, and felt the weight of a thing he could not eat his way out of.