Mycel Capworth's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Mycel Capworth knelt beside the smallest birch and saw the wound. A ring of bark had been chewed away in the night, down to the pale wood. He pressed a thumb to the gash. If the ring closed all the way around, the sapling would die before the season turned. He had eleven oaks, six birches, and one elm here, hidden in a clearing only he walked to. He was growing them into a wedding ground. He had not told her yet. He would not, until the grove was whole, and the moss filled in, and he could lead her between the trunks and ask. He walked the rows and counted the damage. Four saplings bitten. One stripped halfway. At the base of the elm, the one he already feared losing, he found a small chip of something hard in the dirt. He turned it in his palm. A scrap of bark, gnawed clean, with a cluster of tiny tooth marks pressed into the edge. The marks were too small for a deer and too clean for a beetle. He thought of the old stump at the clearing's edge, the rotting one crowded with mushrooms. He walked over and checked the base. Bark shavings. Droppings the size of rice grains. Whatever it was, it slept there by day and fed on his trees by night. He went home and came back before dusk with a wire cage trap and a jar of honey. He poured the honey across the floor of the cage until it pooled thick and bright. He set the trigger plate, tested it twice, and placed the cage between the stump and the wounded elm. Then he sat against an oak and waited. The light went blue. The light went black. Near midnight he heard the cage snap shut. He brought his lantern close and saw two of them inside, fur sticky, wings folded, mouths still working at the honey. Small bats. Young ones. Their teeth matched the marks on the bark. He carried the cage a long way out, past the ridge, and let them go where no saplings grew. When he came back he wrapped each bitten trunk in burlap and tied it off. The elm's ring was almost closed. He pressed the cut edges together and bound them tight, knowing it might not be enough. He stood in the dark grove and counted his trees again. Seventeen still alive. The bats were gone. But the ground cover was still thin, the elm was still failing, and the saplings he had saved tonight now stood wrapped in cloth, marked and weakened, with a long season ahead before any of it would look like a place a woman would say yes in.