Lysander Brightwind's Arc

Chapter 6 of 11

By morning Lyra was at the wheel again. The spool from yesterday sat on the shelf. A second was starting to fill. Celestia sat where Lysander had left her, her wrapped hands folded in her lap. Lysander stripped stems at the bench. The shed was small and the work took every inch of it. Thistle sat on the floor by the door. Lysander had brought him along at dawn because the boy would not stay behind. The child rescued from the far cliff still watched Lysander as if he might vanish. Silver shirt. Silver breeches. Purple hair he could not read the meaning of. He held his knees and said nothing for an hour. Then he stood up. He wandered to the wheel. He crouched by Lyra's foot to watch the treadle. Lyra's thread thinned, caught, and snapped. "Move back," Lyra said, not unkindly. Thistle moved back one step. He crouched again. He reached out and touched a loose daisy stem on the floor. The stem rolled. It rolled under the wheel and jammed the treadle. Lyra pulled her foot up. The spindle jerked. Half a forearm of composite thread came off the bobbin in a knot and tore. "Out," Celestia said. Short. Flat. "He has to go out." Lysander set down his knife. Thistle's black eyes were already wet. The boy had done nothing on purpose and knew he had done something anyway. "I can't watch him and strip stems," Lysander said. "Then stop stripping stems." "We need the stems." "We need the thread more. One broken spool is a day. We don't have a day." Lysander knelt in front of Thistle. The boy would not look up. "I wanted to help," Thistle said. "I know." "I don't know how." Lysander thought of the moth on the roof beam, holding the anchor line steady with its weight. He thought of Celestia's hands. He thought of six days. He picked up a clean daisy stem and put it in Thistle's palm. "Sort them," Lysander said. "Pink in one pile. Purple in the other. On the step outside. Not in here." Thistle closed his hand around the stem. "Outside." "Where I can see you through the door. Don't come past the frame." Thistle carried the sling out to the step. He sat with his back to the green wall and began to sort. Pink. Purple. Pink again. His small hands were steady in a way Lysander's had never been. Inside, Lyra's wheel found its rhythm. The second spool filled by noon. Celestia watched the boy through the open door and did not speak for a long time. "He can't stay with you," she said finally. "He has nowhere else." "Then find him somewhere. Before the seams open." She looked at her wrapped hands. "He needs a place of his own. So do you." Lysander watched Thistle sort the stems and knew she was right.