Levi Ashborne's Arc

Chapter 6 of 6

Levi did not answer Aria's question that morning. He walked back into the forest to think. The village needed proof the flowers were safe. But proof meant naming the pond. And naming the pond meant naming him. He stopped at a crooked shack near his own home, half swallowed by vines. He had never gone inside. Today he pushed the sagging door open. Dust hung in the light. Old jars lined a broken shelf. Levi realized someone had once lived here, testing plants, keeping records. Maybe he could use it. If he could grow proof himself, in secret, the village would never need the pond's name. He could hand Aria a healed patient and stay hidden. He carried diluted flowers and a wilting sprig into the shack. He mixed the water thin, the way he had learned. He pressed a blossom to the sprig. It greened. He tried it on a mouse he trapped, sick and slow. The mouse steadied. It lived. Levi wrote nothing down. He had no charcoal. But he had watched it work. At dusk small lights drifted through the broken window. Fairies, hand-sized, glowing in four colors. One trailed fire. One spun water in a thin ribbon. They circled the healed sprig and would not leave it. Levi swatted at them. They scattered and returned. Their glow lit the whole shack. He understood then. Wherever pond magic worked, these creatures came. They would follow any flower he grew. They would lead people straight here. He could not hide the proof. The magic marked itself. He returned to the farm at full dark. Aria still stood by the cottage, waiting, her white dress gray at the hem. She read his face before he spoke. "I tried to make proof without you knowing the source," Levi said. "It works. But the magic draws things. Little glowing creatures. They swarm anything the water heals. I can't hide where it comes from." Aria was quiet. "Then the village learns of the pond." "There's no other way," Levi said. "Not one that stays secret." She stepped closer. "I won't name you. I'll say the water is mine to gather. I'll take the blame if it fails." She paused. "But they will come to see it. You should decide that now, not when they arrive." Levi looked back toward the trees, toward the pond he had guarded so long. He thought of the boy who died. He thought of the fever still spreading. "Tell them," he said. "Tell them the water heals. Bring them to test it. I'll be there." Aria nodded once. She did not smile, but her shoulders dropped. "Then I go to the village at first light." Levi walked home under the fairy-lit sky. His secret was over. By morning, strangers would follow Aria to his door. He had chosen it. Now he had to face them. He stayed up late pondering on what to do and it hit him. He walked out to the pond and waited for the fairies to come back. He then asked the fairies to help him hide his horns. Two fairies flew straight into the pond and when they resurfaced they had mud in their tiny hands. Little by little the fairies coated Levi’s horns with mud and the horns began to shrink. Levi’s thought was that since he was from a corrupt land that this was the pond curing his impurities.