Levi Ashborne's Arc

Chapter 3 of 6

Levi waited at his shack as the sun dropped. He had spent the day telling himself the bargain was a mistake. He owed no one his safety. But three people were dead, and Aria knew the way. So when the trees turned gray, he stood in his doorway and watched the path. She came at nightfall. Aria pushed a wooden cart ahead of her, its wheel catching on roots. Empty buckets rattled inside it. Her pink hair was tied back now, and the smell of medicine reached him before she did. She stopped a few steps away and set the cart handles down. "You came," Levi said. "I said I would." She looked at his horns without flinching. Once she had run from him. Now she only wiped her hands on her dress. "Show me the water." He led her through the dark to the pool. Its surface glowed faint blue, still as glass. Cattails stood along the stone rim. Aria knelt and stared into it. For a moment she said nothing. "This is what saved my flower," she said. She dipped a bucket. The water shed light as she lifted it. "I threw that bloom in the waste pile. It should have rotted." Levi watched her fill each bucket and load the cart. He kept his distance. "You tell no one this exists," he said. "That was the deal." "I know the deal." She set the last bucket down and looked up at him. "But the water alone will not cure the fever. I need the blue flowers too. Railiana grew forty of them with your pond. They are stronger than any I have tested." She paused. "I do not know yet if they are safe. One of her flowers already killed a bee." Levi frowned. "That is her problem. Not mine." "It is everyone's problem." Aria stood. "If those flowers are poison, and I give them to sick people, I kill them faster than the fever does." She gripped the cart handles. "I need you to help me test the water on them. Yours is the only pond that made them. You understand it better than I do." Levi stared at the glowing pool. He had wanted the world to stay far from this place. Now the world kept asking him for more. "I brought you water," he said. "That was all I agreed to." "Then more will die." She stated it flat, like a fact she had already accepted. She lifted the cart and turned toward the path. "I go to Railiana's farm tomorrow to test the flowers. Come if you want your pond to matter for something." Her wheel creaked into the dark. Levi stood alone by the water. He had kept his bargain. He had thought that would end it.