Lena Birch's Arc

Chapter 3 of 4

Lena reached the edge of the forest with the wrapped blade still under her arm. The village road lay open ahead. Carts rolled past. A woman hung wash on a line. Two men rested axes near a woodpile and looked her way. The bundle was too long, too straight. Anyone who split logs knew a real tool from a hidden sword. She needed to stow the blade before another set of eyes marked it. Her own shed stood at the village edge, but the path there crossed the open square. She turned toward the treeline instead, looking for a gap, a hollow log, a cellar door. Then a dented helmet bobbed up from behind the woodpile. Finn scrambled toward her, shield banging his knee. He talked before he reached her. "You can't walk it through here, everyone's watching, the captain sent me to fetch kindling and if he sees that thing you're finished and so am I—" He stopped, breathing hard, eyes fixed on the bundle. Lena kept her voice level. "Then help me, or lose your favor." That word held him. He glanced back at the woodpile, then at her hands. "The old cellar," he said. "Behind the smithy. Nobody uses it. I hide there when they yell." He was already moving, waving her along the fence line, keeping his shield up as if it hid them both. He led her behind the smithy wall. A low wooden door sat in the ground, half sunk, its hinges brown with rust. Finn hauled it open. Cold air rose from the dark. "Down there. Under the crates." Lena climbed in. The cellar smelled of damp stone and old coal. She found a stack of empty crates against the far wall and slid the blade behind them, still wrapped, flat against the floor. Dust settled over the cloth. She stepped back. From the doorway you saw only crates. She climbed out. Finn stood guard, shield forward, watching the gap between the buildings. His hands shook on the wood. "Nobody comes here?" she asked. "Nobody but me." He pushed the door shut with his boot. It thumped into the frame. "But I light the captain's bracket every night. He asks where I've been. If he ever follows me here—" "He won't." Lena set her hand on the closed door. The blade was out of sight. No stranger on the road would spot it now. Finn wiped his face. "So we're even?" "Not yet." She looked at him, the boy who now knew where her secret lay. "You know two things now. What I carry, and where it hides. That makes you worth more than a favor to me. And a danger." He swallowed and said nothing. Lena walked back toward the road, her arms empty at last. The blade was hidden. But she had traded one problem for another. It sat under crates in a boy's hiding place, and the boy held the only key.