Linnea's Arc

Chapter 3 of 14

The next morning the crowd pressed into the kitchen again. Sick neighbors filled every chair. They leaned on the counter, coughed near the bread, and knocked a pot from the sill. Linnea caught a young plant before it hit the floor. There was no room to work, no quiet corner to hold a person's hand and pull out their pain. Every cure needed calm, and the kitchen had none. "I can't do this here," Linnea told Soraya. "When I heal someone, the whole room watches. People push. I nearly lost a cutting just now." Soraya looked around the packed kitchen. Then their eyes moved to the low door in the back wall. "The root cellar," they said. "It's small, but it's yours. One door. One person at a time." Linnea followed Soraya down the narrow steps. The cellar was cool and dim. Old crates lined one wall. It held a single stool and space for two people, no more. It was exactly enough. They cleared the crates together. Soraya carried the plants down and set them on a shelf, their blue and purple blossoms bright in the dark. Linnea placed the soft-leaved bloom near the stool, its layered petals meant to calm anyone who sat there. Soraya hung a curtain over the door. "Send them down one by one," Linnea said. "Everyone else waits outside. Not in the kitchen. Outside." Soraya went up and cleared the room. The neighbors grumbled but filed out. The first patient came down alone, an old man with a shaking hand. Linnea sat him on the stool. In the quiet, with no one watching, Linnea drew the sickness from his fingers. The shaking stopped. He wept and climbed the stairs steady. One by one they came. The cellar stayed calm. Linnea worked without a crowd at their back. By afternoon the eight doses were nearly gone, but each person had been seen in peace. The private room worked. Linnea finally had a place to heal. Then Soraya came down the steps fast, breathing hard. In their hands sat a small round creature with soft fur and folded wings. It trembled. "Someone left this outside the door," Soraya said. "With a note." They held out a cream-colored card. Linnea knew it at once. Mia's card. On the back, in neat ink: *Told you fame would find you. This is only the first gift. They're coming.* Linnea took the winged creature. Its heart raced against their palm. Outside, past the curtain, past the door, they heard it now. Not eleven voices. Not twenty. A steady swell of them, moving toward the house from every direction. The private room could take one person at a time. Linnea looked at the trembling creature, then up the stairs toward the growing sound. One door would never be enough for what was coming.