Luna Starling's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Luna Starling had been given six weeks to weave a crown of starflowers for a boy she had never met, and she did not know what a starflower looked like. She knelt in her front garden at first light, thumbing dew off a row of daisies. The letter from the stewards of Briarthorn sat inside her apron pocket. It named her the last living flower-weaver in the province and named the price of refusal. She had read it twice and then gone outside to work, because work was what she did when she was afraid. Her garden held every bloom she had ever coaxed from seed. Roses crowded the fence. Lilies leaned against blue cornflowers. Marigolds spilled over the path to her small wooden cottage. She could name each plant by leaf shape alone. She could weave a wedding wreath in an afternoon and a funeral braid before supper. But nowhere in the beds around her did a starflower grow. She had only heard the name in old songs. The songs said it opened once, at night, for the true heir of Briarthorn, and shut again by dawn. Luna went inside and spread her grandmother's books across the table by the hearth. The fire was low. She fed it two sticks and sat down to read. Every entry on starflowers described the bloom in a different way. One book said five petals. Another said seven. A third said the petals moved. She closed the books. A weaver could not braid a flower from rumor. She needed to see one open with her own eyes, count the petals, feel the stem, learn how the thing behaved before it closed. She pulled down her satchel and packed it: shears, twine, a wrapped heel of bread, her grandmother's smallest journal. She banked the fire and latched the door behind her. The stewards had written that a single wild patch still bloomed on the north slope above the old orchard, three days' walk from her gate. She had never gone that far from her garden. She started up the road while the dew was still on the grass.