Fern's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Fern found the rabbit at dusk, one back leg bent the wrong way, breathing too fast. Fern crouched in the ferns and pressed both paws against their own mushroom cap to think. The rabbit needed somewhere hidden. Fern had nowhere hidden. That was the whole problem with the dream Fern carried around like a stone in the pocket: a secret grove for every wounded thing in the woods, and not one safe patch of dirt to start it on. A fox barked two ridges over. The rabbit flinched. Fern scooped the rabbit up in a sling of leaves and ran. Every clearing Fern knew was wrong. The hollow log had an owl. The stream bend had tracks. The bramble patch faced the open trail. Fern's small legs burned. The rabbit's heartbeat drummed against Fern's ribs. Night came down fast between the trees. A green light blinked once behind a birch. Fern froze. The light blinked again, lower, patient. Fern crept toward it and found a pixie no taller than a pinecone, kneeling in the moss with a satchel open beside her. Flowers crowded her hair. Her wings caught the last blue of the sky. She did not look up. "Bring the rabbit closer," she said. "You're squeezing the bad leg." Fern loosened the sling. "Who are you?" "Willow. Move." She splinted the leg with two twigs and a strip of bark before Fern finished sitting down. Her hands were quick and did not shake. Fern watched her work and felt something loosen in the chest, the way a knot loosens when someone else takes an end. "There's a fox," Fern said. "I know. That's why I whistled you over." Willow tied off the splint. "You've been carrying this poor thing in circles. You don't have anywhere to put her, do you." "No." Willow stood and brushed moss off her knees. She walked to a wall of ivy between two leaning stones and pushed it aside with one hand. Behind it was a door. A crooked wooden building sat tucked into the hillside, roof shaggy with moss, windows glowing warm. A carved sign read Groveleaf Animal Clinic. Fern stared. "That was there the whole time?" "It's been waiting for someone to help me run it." Willow looked at Fern's mushroom cap, at the rabbit, at Fern's dirty paws. "The building's mine. The idea sounds like yours." Fern carried the rabbit inside. Willow lit a lamp. They laid the rabbit on a bed of dry grass, and the small body finally went still with sleep instead of fear. Fern turned to the door. Anyone tracking blood could follow the trail straight to it. The ivy was not enough. The fox would come, and others after it. "We need to hide the entrance," Fern said. "By morning." Willow was already reaching for her satchel.