Linny Marsh's Arc

Chapter 13 of 22

Linny woke with her hand still on her knife. The stone glowed the same as before. Her breath had frosted the wool at her collar. She sat up and checked her pack. Half a strip of dried meat. A heel of bread gone hard. Three walnuts. Two paint tubes she had kept warm against her ribs, and one that had split in the night, the color frozen out of it in a dark bead. Her water skin was ice. She counted again. She always counted twice when the number was bad. The number did not change. Two days of food if she was careful. One if she was honest. The cold was already in her fingers when she tried to work the charcoal. She dropped it twice before she could hold it. She stood and stamped feeling back into her feet. She walked the ring of frost-laden trees again. Their fine branches held ice like glass. The shimmering canopy caught the flat light and threw it back at her, unchanged. Nothing had melted. Nothing had shifted. She was the only thing in the grove that could die. She made herself think it plainly. If she stayed, she would freeze. If she waited one more day for the girl, she would not have the strength to walk out. She went back to the stone. She meant to leave a second note. A better one. She would promise anything. She would offer the paints, the coat, the pockets she had stitched in herself. The pebble was where she had left it. Under the pebble was a page. Her page. The one she had torn out and weighed down the day before. The block letters she had drawn faced up at her: I CAN SEE IT. TEACH ME THE RULES. I WILL WAIT. Her hand shook as she picked it up. The paper was warm. She turned it over. On the back, in a child's careful print, two lines: GO HOME. YOU'RE NOT READY. Linny read it twice. Then a third time. She waited for anger. What came instead was a small, clean drop in her chest, like a stone falling into still water. Not no. Not never. Not ready. She folded the page along its old crease and slid it into the inside pocket of her coat, against the paint tubes. She looked once more at the stone, at the light that would not move for her. "I'll come back," she said. Her voice went nowhere again. That was fine. The answer had already been given. She packed her blanket. She ate the hard bread while she walked, because standing still would cost her fingers. She turned her back on the grove and started down the trail she had broken coming in. She was going home. She was not done.