Fern Capella's Arc

Chapter 4 of 4

Fern's feet touched the moss. The prince stood taller than she remembered, and closer. He knelt to bring his face nearer hers, one knee in the grass. His green sleeves brushed the ground. Up close his eyes were the color of pond weed. He smiled a small, curious smile. "What's your name, little one?" Fern opened her mouth. Nothing came out. Her voice, when it worked at all, worked at the size of her body. Small. She tried again. A whisper, thinner than moth wing, slipped between her lips and died before it reached him. The prince tilted his head. He waited. She saw his shoulders start to shift, the beginning of a rise, the beginning of a turn back toward the pond. In one more breath he would stand. In two he would be gone. She could not lie. She could not shout. But she could grow. Fern pressed her palm flat to the moss. She pushed her magic down through her fingers, hard, the way she pushed it into a dying edge. Green rushed under the skin of the ground. A single stem shot up between her hand and the prince's knee, thickened, opened. A trumpet flower, pale as milk, tall as her shoulder. Its bell pointed up at her face. She cupped the bloom, put her lips to the narrow end, and spoke into it. "Fern Capella." The flower carried her voice out its wide mouth, full-sized, close to his ear. He startled. Then he laughed. It was a real laugh, surprised out of him. "Fern Capella," he repeated. He touched the petal with one gloved finger. "You grew a throat." "I grow things," she said into the flower. "It's what I do." "Show me another." She grew him a second. Then a third, blue this time, and a fourth that smelled of pepper. The prince sat down in the grass. Attendants hovered at the hedge and did not approach. He asked her questions and she answered through the blooms, her real voice small, the flowers making it heard. Her hands began to shake. She had pushed too much, too fast. A bright line of pain opened behind her eyes. She kept her face still. She could not stop yet. The prince noticed anyway. He caught her wrist. His glove was cool. "You're cold," he said. "You're using yourself up." "I'm fine." "Come to supper tomorrow. Bring no flowers. I want to hear the small voice." He stood, and the attendants stepped forward with him. He looked down at her once more. "Don't be late, Fern Capella." He walked to the pond. Fern sat in the ring of blooms she had made. Her wings would not fold flat. Her hands would not stop shaking. She had won the prince's ear, and tomorrow he wanted the true one, the one no flower could carry.