Mara Kellison's Arc

Chapter 1 of 6

Mara Kellison had three weeks to grow a garden worthy of a crown. The festival judges would name a May Queen in June, and she wanted that title more than she had wanted anything. She stood before her small wooden cottage and looked at her flower beds. They were green and tidy. They were also plain. Daisies. Marigolds. A row of common white roses that bloomed the same in every yard in the valley. She knelt and touched a marigold. Honest work, she thought, but honest would not win. Last year's winner had grown a hedge of purple roses so rich the judges gasped. Mara had seen them. She had nothing like that. She went inside and spread her seed catalogs across the table. She circled every bush she could afford. Purple roses. Climbing vines. A dozen packets of bulbs. By noon she had a plan and a short list of what her coins would buy. By dusk she had planted the first bed and watered it twice. The plan worked, mostly. Within two weeks her beds filled out. The purple rose bushes came in thick, layered blossoms crowding every stem. Their green leaves shone. Any judge would stop and look. Mara walked the rows and let herself smile. She had closed the gap. Then she walked to the far corner where the forest met her fence. A deer had slipped through a loose board. It stood frozen, white tail high. Mara stepped back slowly. Behind the deer, in the shadow of the pines, something larger watched her. A black wolf stood at the tree line. Its fur held a dark sheen, and its yellow eyes fixed on her beds. It did not snarl. It simply watched, calm and certain, as if it had chosen this place. The deer bolted. The wolf did not. Mara held still. Her heart slammed. The purple roses, her whole chance at the crown, grew in the open bed just steps from where the wolf stood. One night of a wolf in her garden could trample everything she had planted. She could not win a title from ruined ground. Then the wolf turned its head. Behind it, half hidden among the roots, a single rose glowed blue. Mara had never seen such a bloom. Its petals shone pale and clear, like water lit from under. No seed catalog sold a flower like that. No yard in the valley held one. The judges had never seen its equal. Her breath caught. That one blue rose could win the crown outright. It grew wild, deep in the wolf's territory, guarded by yellow eyes that had not left her. Mara had solved her plain garden. She had grown beds fit for a queen. But the only bloom that could truly win now sat beyond a wolf she could not pass. She wiped her hands on her dress and stared at the blue rose. Getting it would be the hardest thing she had ever tried.