Lysander Brightwind's Arc

Chapter 9 of 11

The plug held through the night. In the morning Lysander stood outside the shed with a list in his head and no time to write it down. Celestia had set the deadline plain: Thistle needed a permanent home before the flying rite, or the boy would be cast out of the clans entirely. Lysander had asked every elder he could name. Every elder had said no. He walked the grove path with Thistle beside him. The boy in his silver shirt kept pace without speaking. Lysander tried the weaver elder at the west shed first. She looked at Thistle's hair, then at his shirt, and shook her head before Lysander finished the question. The spinner elder at the pond said the same. The third elder did not even open her door. "They won't say why," Thistle said. His voice was flat. "Just no." "I know." "It's the silver." "I know." Lyra found them on the path back. She was carrying a bundle of stems for Celestia. Her robe still had the crooked seam at the hem. "Aldric is at the old oak," she said. "With a human. And another child. I thought you should know." Lysander went. The old oak stood at the edge of the grove where the path forked. Aldric sat on a root. Beside him, a woman in round glasses and a flowered jacket sat cross-legged in the dirt, staring at her own hands as if she had misplaced them. A small brown-haired boy in rags pressed one palm flat against the oak's bark and did not move. "Pip," Aldric said, without turning. "Fernwhisper. Found him at the root last night. He is trying to get home." "And her?" "Whitmore. She came through a door she should not have opened." Aldric's mouth tightened. "The stitching is loose. More will come." Dr. Whitmore looked up. "I know how a liminal shift works. I just can't walk it back. Sorry. That's not useful to you." Lysander crouched by Pip. The boy did not flinch, but he did not turn either. His palm stayed on the bark. "His mother is at the oak," Aldric said. "Not this one. Another. He touches every oak on the way." Lysander looked back at Thistle, standing apart on the path in his silver shirt. Then at Aldric. "No elder will take him," Lysander said. "I've asked them all." Aldric was quiet a long moment. Then he said, "Then he stays with you. Past the deadline. Past the rite. The clans will call it wrong. It will cost you standing you have not spent yet." "He stays," Lysander said. Thistle heard it. He did not smile. He walked over and sat down beside Pip at the oak, and put his own hand on the bark next to the smaller one. He did not say anything. He did not need to.