Linny Marsh's Arc

Chapter 2 of 8

Linny walked home from the picnic with the journal pressed against her ribs. The coat pockets bumped her hips as she went. A crust of bread. A stub of charcoal. Two brushes. That was all they held. Past the ridge was three days out, maybe four. She counted what she had and the number stayed too small. She would freeze before the frost line. She would starve before the leaning pine. She needed rope. She needed a blanket. She needed more than this coat could carry. The cobblestone shop sat under its climbing vines, windows warm. Linny pushed the door open. Her sister Lena looked up from the counter, needle held between her teeth, blue hair pulled back. A bolt of gray wool lay across her lap. She took the needle out. "You're late." "I know." Lena watched her cross the room. The seamstress read faces the way she read cloth. She saw the red at Linny's eyes and the set of her jaw. "What happened." Linny stopped at the stairs. She thought of Forge sitting back on the blanket. Silly dream. She thought of the other house, the other voice, the same sentence. She did not want to hand any of it to her sister. "Nothing." "Linny." "Nothing, Lena." She climbed the stairs before her sister could stand. Her room was small and smelled of linseed oil. She dragged the wooden chest from under the bed. She worked fast so she would not think. A wool blanket, folded tight. A coil of rope from the peg by the window. Two tins of paint. Three brushes wrapped in rag. A tin cup. Hard cheese and a heel of bread stolen from the kitchen shelf. She rolled the blanket around the rest and tied it with twine. Last, she tucked the painter's journal inside her coat, against her chest, where the pages could feel her breathe. She set the bundle by the door and lay down in her clothes. Downstairs, Lena's needle moved in the quiet, tick tick tick, long after the lamps went out. Morning came gray. Linny listened at the top of the stairs. Lena was already at the counter, bent over the gray wool, a shirt laid across her knees. Her hands moved without stopping. She did not look up when the floorboard above her creaked. Linny went into her father’s room. He was pale. He’d made her promise never to give up on her dreams, so we wouldn’t. She gave his head a lasting kiss before she climbed down in her stocking feet with the bundle over her shoulder. She reached the back door. Her hand was on the latch when she stopped and looked once at her sister's blue head bowed over the cloth. "I'll come back," she said, too soft to carry. She stepped into the yard. She pulled her boots on at the wall. The bundle rode her back now, heavy and honest. Past the garden, past the low fence, the path bent toward the ridge road. Linny took it.