Nell Larkspur's Arc

Chapter 2 of 23

Inside the shack, Lena warmed her hands at the fire while Nell set water to boil. The fox watched her from the hearthstones, tail curled tight. Nell sat across from her and asked what he should have asked weeks ago. Where did her sister go in, and when. Lena told it flat. Her sister walked past the old birch line four days after the first frost. They had fought over money the night before. She hadn't told their father. She thought her sister had gone to the deep hollows past the ridge, where the trappers stopped going two winters back. Nell felt the weight settle. He knew the near woods by every root and stone. Past the ridge, the paths tangled. Things moved the trees. Folk who went in without a map came out changed, or not at all. "I can't promise you a search," he said. "Not blind. I'd lose us both." Lena's needle-pricked fingers tightened on her cup. "Then we find a map." "There's only one in the village." He looked at the fire. "The librarian keeps it. She won't hand it over." "We'll see." They walked down through the pines and into the cobbled streets. Folk stepped aside for Nell, eyes on his ears. Lena walked steady beside him. The library rose at the square's end, its stained windows dark with old dust. Nell had not been inside in years. The librarian sat behind a table stacked with loose parchment, writing fast. Silver hair, glasses too big for her narrow face, a staff leaned at her knee with a red crystal in its head. She did not look up. "We need the deep-woods map," Nell said. "No." "Her sister's lost past the ridge." "Many are." The pen kept moving. "The map stays here. It has for thirty-one years." Lena stepped forward. She set her basket on the table. "I'll trade." The pen stopped. "You collect what people remember," Lena said. "My mother's stitching songs. I know all of them. My father taught me before his voice went." The librarian looked up. Her dark eyes fixed on Lena through the round glass. "Sing one now." Lena sang four lines, low, about thread and river water. The librarian wrote each word down. When Lena finished, the old woman rose and went to a locked cabinet. She returned with a folded square of vellum. "You may look. You may not take. One hour." She spread the map. Nell leaned close. Ink lines forked through country he had never crossed. He tried to hold it in memory and knew he could not. Lena drew a folded linen from her basket. She laid it flat over the vellum and pressed both palms down. Her fingers went white at the knuckles. When she lifted the cloth, the ink had climbed into the weave, blue and exact. The librarian stared. Then she sat back down and picked up her pen. "Go," she said. "Before I remember I forbade that." Outside, Nell folded the cloth into his coat. He had his map. Now he had no reason left to refuse the woods.