Ninka Evertrue's Arc

Chapter 23 of 29

Ninka stood at the front doors with the fear-push boy behind her when she smelled it. Wet iron. Rot. She turned toward the garden. The sunflowers along the meadow's edge had bent overnight. Their heads hung black. The soil under them was slick and dark, like a wound. "He's poisoning it," she said. Rebecka came up beside her and looked at the line of blackened ground. It moved. A finger's width of rot crept toward the tomato rows while they watched. "Voodoo rot," Rebecka said. "He can't reach the school past Storm, so he's killing the food." The garden was what fed the children. If it died by dawn, the commune died with it. Ninka ran for the stone hall and found Sylvara at the long table, sorting leaves into piles. Sylvara was the Fae teacher who had come out of the woods weeks ago with vines in her hair, and who spoke like she paid for her words by the letter. Her wings were the first thing Ninka checked now. Gray at the edges. Sylvara had noticed the smell before Ninka came in. "The meadow's edge," Ninka said. "I know." "Can you stop it?" Sylvara set down a leaf. "Not with what's on this table. Rot like that eats through poultice. You have to wash it out." "Wash it with what?" "The well." Ninka's stomach turned. The Faewish well fed everything. Drawing it down for the garden meant less water for the cabins, the kitchen, the children. But dead soil meant no food at all. "How much?" "All of tonight's draw. Maybe tomorrow's. I mix it with Moonwhisper moss and we pour a line between his rot and the roots. The moss won't hold for a stranger's hands. It has to be mine." "Then we go." They worked at the well in the dark. Sylvara pulled bucket after bucket while Ninka carried them to the garden edge. The water inside shone like small stars. Sylvara crushed the green moss between her palms and stirred it in. Her wings stayed gray. She did not speak. They poured the first line. The rot hissed and pulled back an inch. Then it pushed forward again. "More," Sylvara said. They emptied the well to its stone ring. Ninka's arms shook. Sylvara knelt in the mud and pressed both hands flat against the poisoned soil. She held them there a long time. When she lifted them, the black was gone under her palms. The rot along the whole line broke apart and sank. Sylvara sat back in the dirt. Her wings were green again at the tips. "It's clean," she said. "The well is empty. It will fill by tomorrow night. Not before." Ninka looked at the saved garden, then at the dry well behind her. The children would eat. But they would be thirsty by noon, and her father was still at the tree line, watching what she spent.