Ninka Evertrue's Arc

Chapter 19 of 29

Ninka woke before the children and found she still could not feel the edges of the meadow. For weeks her mind had reached past the cabins on its own, brushing the ridge, the road, the trees. Now there was only her body on the mattress and the cold floor under her feet. Her gift was gone. If her father broke free of the trap on the ridge tonight, she would not know until he was at the door. She went to the school and told Sylvara. Sylvara was cutting mint at the long table, her wings folded flat. "I brew for tired bodies," Sylvara said. "Not empty ones. What you burned out needs old work. Root, bone, sleep, and someone who knows the woods." "I don't know anyone like that," Ninka said. "He came up the path an hour ago. I told him to wait by the hearth." The man filled the doorway of the common room. Beard to his chest. Cook's apron over a bow and a fishing net. He was setting a black iron pot on the new hearth as if he had always cooked there. "Garrick," he said. "I smelled the children from the far hill. Worry and hope. I came." "I can't pay you," Ninka said. "Didn't ask." He looked at her the way her grandmother looked at a sick calf. "You're grey under the eyes. When did you last eat meat." She could not remember. He left before she answered. She heard him at the tree line, then nothing for two hours. He came back with two rabbits and a bundle of roots she did not know. He put them in the pot with water from the well. Sylvara brought a jar down from her shelf. Inside, purple liquid moved on its own, silver lines swimming through it like small fish. "One draught," Sylvara said. "Stirred into his broth. Not the whole bottle. Your body has to do most of the work." Garrick tipped a measure into the pot. The steam turned pale blue and then went back to ordinary steam. He ladled a bowl and set it in front of Ninka. "Eat all of it." She ate. The broth was hot and plain and tasted like her grandmother's kitchen. Halfway through the bowl she felt the meadow again. Faint. A thin thread, not the whole cloth. She reached, careful, and touched the ridge road. Her father's car was still stuck where the salt had held it. He was walking now. Two miles out. Coming on foot. She set the spoon down. "He's walking," she said. Garrick nodded once, as if she had told him the stew needed salt. "Then we've got time to finish the bowl." She kept eating. Her gift was not back. It was a thread. But a thread was enough to know he was coming, and now she was not alone in the kitchen.