Lysander Brightwind's Arc

Chapter 3 of 11

By dusk Lysander Brightwind had emptied the last bundle of daisies onto Celestia Threadwhisper's worktable. He counted the stems twice. Forty-two. Enough for six days of spinning. Not thirty. He set his palm flat on the pile and felt how thin it was. Celestia looked up from the spindle. Her hands were red at the knuckles. "How short?" "Three weeks short." "Then the seams open again in six days." She said it plain, the way she said everything. Then she added, "I can spin faster. It won't matter." He knew the grotto. He had picked it clean that morning. The daisies grew only along the cliff mouth, where the wind broke on stone. He had pulled every stem that would come free without killing the root. "I need someone who knows why they grow there," he said. "And nowhere else." Celestia set the spindle down. "The old scholar. In the robe of gossamer and silver. He owes the grove an answer for something. He might give you this one." Lysander flew to the edge of the grove before full dark. He found the scholar seated on a flat stone outside a lean-to, sorting pressed leaves into two piles. Grey hair. Brown eyes that did not lift when Lysander landed. The robe was the one Celestia had described, hem grey with road dust. This was the man fairies spoke of when they wanted knowledge and did not want to say why they needed it. "Aldric Silverweave," Lysander said. "I have daisies that resist the blight. I need more of them. My grotto holds only six days' worth." Aldric kept sorting. "Show me a stem." Lysander handed one over. Aldric held it near his eye, then bit the root and spat. "Cliff daisies. They drink from a seam of clean water under the stone. The seam runs east under the chasm." "There are more, then. On the far side." "On the far cliff. Above where the clans stopped speaking." Aldric set the stem down. "I won't cross for you. That is my limit. Ask it plain and I'll answer it plain, but I won't cross." "I'm not asking you to cross. I'm asking where they grow." "Then you have your answer." Aldric returned to his leaves. "A child waits on that cliff. She has been waiting since the chasm opened. Bring her back with the daisies or don't come back at all." Lysander flew home through the dark with the one stem in his fist. Celestia was still at the spindle when he pushed through the door. "There are more," he said. "Across the chasm." She did not stop spinning. "Then we need a bridge before we need thread." He sat down beside her. Six days of daisies lay between them. On the far side of the grove, a gap he could not fly waited with a child on its lip and a field of flowers behind her.