Lena Marsh's Arc

Chapter 2 of 24

Nell came down from the hill at dusk. He didn't knock. He shut the shop door behind him and stood in the lamplight with snow melting off his boots. The fox slipped in beside him and settled by the hearth. Linny was upstairs, changing the water in their father's basin. Lena had the half-finished shirt spread across her counter. She had been staring at it for an hour. "You can't marry him," Nell said. Flat. He looked at her hands, then away. "Hild." "I know." Lena smoothed the linen. "You'd take banishment." "I'd take the shirt finished first." Her fingers pulled a thread from the air without her meaning to. It hung there, blue. "Once he's well, he'll know what to do. He always did." Nell watched the thread. "You believe that." "I have to." He was quiet. Then: "Tell me what you need." She touched the collar of the shirt. "Something of him. In the weave. Or the magic goes through him and out the other side. Like pouring water on a stone." She had learned this reading her mother's old notes at the counter that morning. It had taken her until noon to understand the word essence. It had taken her until now to say it aloud. "Blood. Breath. Something living. And a way to pull it into the thread without killing what's left of him." "He's too weak for a cut." "I know." A small sound from the corner. The chipmunk she'd made a jacket for last week sat on the windowsill, snow on its petal-shaped ears, watching them with round eyes. Lena had forgotten she'd left the window cracked. She closed it gently. The chipmunk didn't move. "There's a witch," Lena said, not looking at him. "In the woods. They say she can pull a thing out of a body without breaking it." "No." Nell's voice dropped. "Not her." "Nell —" "You don't know what she takes." "Do you?" He didn't answer. That was answer enough. She had heard the name before, the way people said it in the shop and then apologized for saying it. She hadn't known he'd already paid something to her. "I'll find another way," he said. "Give me the night. There are books at the library. There's my mother's line. Something." Lena looked at the shirt. Two days left. Her father coughed above them, thin and wet through the ceiling. "All right," she said. "The night." He held her eyes a moment longer, then went. The fox followed. The bell rang once behind them. Lena waited until the sound of his boots faded down the cobblestone. Then she took her cloak from the peg. She banked the fire. She wrote a note for Linny and left it under the thimble on the counter. She went out the back way, toward the woods.