Mercedes Morgan's Arc

Chapter 19 of 21

Mercedes woke before dawn with the three gaps still open in her head. The herd fed at the post. The hide sat rolled by her fire. She had held the bond partway, but she knew the silences she had left. If a hard wind came, or if a cow calved wrong, the herd would test those silences and find them thin. She needed the three lines. Her grandmother could not give them. Theren could not give them. She pulled on her boots and walked the edge of the camp, thinking of anywhere else the words might still live. Celestia Wayfinder stood at the creek when Mercedes came through the alders. She held a scroll tied with a plain cord. She said she had carried it since the pass and had waited to see if Mercedes would speak the rites clean or guess. Mercedes had not guessed. That was why the scroll could come out now. Mercedes took it and untied the cord. The parchment was stained and cracked. Most of the writing had faded past reading. She turned it toward the low sun and found only smears where full lines had been. Her hands went cold. Celestia said the ink was gone but the words were not. She told Mercedes to lay the scroll flat on a stone by the water and read aloud what she already had, in order, and to listen in the gaps. Mercedes did as she was told. She spoke the thirty-five lines slow. In each of the three silences she waited. The first time she heard nothing but the creek. The second time a phrase came into her mouth without her choosing it, four words about the cow and the calf and the near ground. She wrote it on the margin of the hide with a charred stick. The third gap gave her a line about the bull's return. She wrote that too. The last gap stayed empty. She read again and heard only water. Celestia said one line had been lost before the scroll was made. It would not come back. Mercedes rolled the scroll and put it in her pack. She walked to the post with the hide and the two new lines. The bull lifted his head. She spoke the rites from the beginning, thirty-seven lines now, and left one breath silent where the last line should have been. The bull did not move away. The cows stayed at the hay. When she finished the air felt different against her face, tighter, like a knot pulled most of the way closed. The binding held stronger than before. It was not whole. One line was gone for good, and she would have to learn what a herd bound by all but one word would do when the ground opened and the young ran.