Linnea's Arc

Chapter 13 of 14

The morning after Mia left, Linnea walked the list to the nearest village. One name. One house. One cutting to bring home. The purple and blue plant sat in the barn on the empty shelf. She wanted a second beside it before the day ended. But she still had no room to heal in. The barn stood open to any eye. The lord's men could pass the road and see her through the doors. She could not treat a single patient without risking capture. The house belonged to a farmer with a limping wife. He met Linnea at his gate with a dog beside him, broad-chested and still, ears up. The dog watched her without a sound. "You're the one who gave us the flower," the farmer said. "A woman came before you. Fine suit. Pearls. She bought a cutting off my neighbor and left me a warning." He pulled a scrap of paper from his coat. Mia's hand. It named the lord and told him to keep the plant hidden. So Mia had walked this road first. Not to steal the cure. To guard it. Linnea's chest loosened. Her adversary was clearing the trail. "I need a cutting," Linnea said. "And I need somewhere no one watches. Somewhere small." The farmer studied her. He looked at his wife in the doorway, one hand on the frame, weight off her bad leg. "You fix her," he said, "and I'll show you the old milk cellar. Stone walls. One door. No windows. Nobody's opened it in years." He led her down stone steps behind the barn. The cellar was cold and dark and dry. Thick walls. A door that latched from inside. No crack for a soldier's eye. Linnea set the farmer's cutting on a shelf beside a lantern. Then she pressed a petal from her own plant to the wife's lips. The wife breathed. She put her foot flat. She stepped down hard and did not wince. "Take this room," the farmer said. "Long as you heal folk who come sick. No board with your name. No line. Just the door." Linnea looked at the two plants on the shelf, the low ceiling, the single latch. A hidden place at last. Underground, walled in stone, off any road the lord's men rode. "I'll take it," she said. That afternoon she healed three more from the village, one at a time, in the quiet dark. No crowd. No panther guarding a line. Just a door that closed. At dusk the farmer's dog barked once, sharp, at the top of the steps. Linnea climbed and looked out. A stranger stood at the barn, turning Mia's list over in his hands. His own copy. He looked at the cellar door, then wrote something down. Someone else had reached this village too. And now they knew where she healed.