Mercedes Morgan's Arc

Chapter 22 of 23

By morning the fence stood, and the binding held, but Mercedes could feel the cost of both in her arms and behind her eyes. Fern had spoken the lines through half the night when Mercedes dozed by the post. They were two voices holding thirty-four elk in the trees. If either of them fell sick, the herd would drift. And Fern's own village, days east, still did not know their elk had wandered or that Mercedes had taken them in. No one out there was coming to help. Mercedes sat by the fire and worked it through. She needed more hands. Caretakers who could stand at the post in turns, who could learn the thirty-seven lines from Fern and take a share of the watch. That meant word had to travel to the villages, and she and Fern could not leave the post to carry it. Theren came up the creek path at midmorning with a bundle of snares over his shoulder. He was the elf who had watched the herds when they last came through, and he had already given her four lines of the rite from his own memory. He stopped at the fence and ran his hand along the top log, testing it. "You built this yesterday," he said. It was not a question. "I need you to carry something," Mercedes said. "To your settlement, and then west to Fern's village, and any village between." He set the snares down. "Say it." "That the herd is back. That we need caretakers here before the summer. That Fern and I cannot hold them alone." Theren nodded once. He did not argue the distance. Mercedes went to the sled and pulled out a scrap of tanned hide and the stub of charcoal she kept for marking snares. She wrote it plain. The herd had returned. Thirty-four head at the tree line west of the pass. Caretakers needed to learn the rite and stand the watch. Send anyone who could walk. She signed it with her grandmother's mark, the one the older villages would know. Fern watched over her shoulder and pressed her small thumbprint below the mark, so her village would trust it too. Mercedes folded the hide twice and sealed the fold with pine pitch warmed at the fire. She put it in Theren's hand. "Read it at every hearth. Leave it at the last one." "I'll be three weeks," he said. "Then we hold three weeks." He took the blue roan for the distance. Mercedes watched him ride out along the creek until the alders closed behind him. Fern went back to the post and began the lines again. Mercedes sat down in the snow with her back against the fence and let her eyes close for the first time in two days. The message was gone from her hands. Now she had to stay standing until it came back with people behind it.