Laurel Greymourner's Arc

Chapter 2 of 5

More years passed. Laurel counted them by the black butterflies that hatched, lived, and died on her shoulders. Her stone hands stayed locked over her face. She could not lower them. She could not part a finger to see the bench she had left half-finished, or the chisel that had fallen from her grip onto the path. She could only feel the cold in the stone and the slow drip of indigo down her cheeks. One night the ground under her changed. Blue vines had grown up around her ankles over the long years, a thick knot of them woven through the dark grass. Now they tightened. They climbed her shins and locked her stone cast in place, as if the garden itself had decided she would never fall. She could not fight them. So she did the only thing left. She whispered to the willows. She spoke inside her head, because her mouth was stone. She spoke to the great dark willow above her, the one whose roots she had wanted her whole life to carve. She told it she was sorry she had never learned its name. She told it she did not know curses, only stone, and she was asking for help she had no right to ask for. The path answered. The scattered stones along the walk lit up one by one, a soft blue-green glow crawling from stone to stone until the whole line burned like a row of held breaths. The light was the same blue as her tears. It was the same blue as the fountains, the grass, the drained statues. The curse and the willows were drinking from the same well. A single vine at her ankle lifted. Laurel felt it lift because she wanted it to lift. She thought left, and the vine curled left. She thought up, and it rose along her stone dress and paused at her wrist, waiting. She tried it again to be sure. The vine bent exactly where she asked. She could not tell if the willows were listening to her, or if some sliver of her own magic had survived under the stone and found a new body in the vines. It did not matter yet. She had a hand that was not hers, and it would obey. She sent the vine down to the path. It wrapped the fallen chisel and lifted it. The iron and indigo caught the glow from the stones. Slowly, carefully, she guided the vine up her own frozen arm and pressed the chisel flat against the back of her stone wrist, where her real hand was locked over her eye. She could not carve herself free tonight. She did not know enough. But she held her tool again, by a hand made of vine and willow-light, and for the first time since the hooded woman fled up the steps, Laurel had moved.