Luna Brightwell's Arc

Chapter 6 of 6

Morning light came weak through the split roof seam. Luna stood under the braced beam and touched the vault door Frank had jammed there. It held, but she could see the sag returning. Frank ran a hand along a rotted post nearby and pressed. His thumb sank into the wood like it was bread. "This is soft everywhere," Frank said. "I braced what I could. But heavy snow will load these supports past what my props take. I'm a lawyer who knows joints, Luna. I'm not a builder. Rebuilding rotted supports needs real hands. I don't have them." Luna felt the old worry rise. Sixty people slept under wood that could not hold snow. She had no crew. The council would sell her nothing. She stood in the cold and understood she could not buy her way out of this. Stella came down the stairs, steadier now than after her burnout. Elena followed, her frozen hair catching the gray light. Luna had sought Elena out to heal Stella, and had learned Elena's cold could pull water from swollen wood. Now she looked at both of them and saw not magic, but people. "You keep asking us to hold the roof," Luna said. "But I've been thinking wrong. I claimed this place for survivors who want to heal. Some of them built things before the war." Stella crossed her arms. "You have carpenters upstairs." "I have a room of them," Luna said. "I never asked. I thought I had to protect them from work." Elena spoke flat. "Then ask. Give them a task. It heals faster than rest." Luna climbed to the largest room. She stood before the huddled survivors and did the hardest thing. She asked for help instead of giving it. Nine people stood. A woman who framed houses. Two who cut timber. An old man who had rebuilt a barn each spring for forty years. They worked all day. The timber-cutters felled dead trees on the ridge and dragged them in. Frank marked every rotted post. Elena pressed her palms to green, wet wood and drew the water out until it was dry enough to set. Stella did not burn a single flame; she carried beams on her shoulder and said nothing about how her arms shook. By dark, four new supports stood where rot had been. Solid wood, cut and dried and driven home. Luna pushed on one with her full weight. It did not give. "That holds snow," the old man said. "That holds a hard winter." Luna sat against the fresh post, spent and warm inside for the first time in days. She had found her crew in the very people she came here to save. The supports were sound now. But she counted the beams they had not reached, the far room still braced only by Frank's props, and the timber pile already low. She had proven the work could be done. She had not proven she could finish it before the snow came.