Ninka Evertrue's Arc

Chapter 28 of 29

The stone figure at the meadow's edge did not move all morning. Sparrows kept landing on its shoulders. Ninka walked past it to the school and stopped inside the front hall. Children were eating on the floor again. Some sat on the stairs. Two were crying over spilled broth. Garrick stood in the middle of them with the big pot, ladling into whatever bowl came up. He looked tired. "There's no room," Ninka said. "No," Garrick said. "And no table. Kids eat where they land. Then they scatter. Nobody sits together." She watched it for another minute. The children ate in corners, alone or in twos. Kaia sat on a step by herself, drawing lines in cold broth with her spoon. Lavender's small ones ate on their cots because there was nowhere else. This was the fracture Ninka had been feeling for weeks. Twelve gifted kids under one roof and no place where they became one thing. She went to Kaia. "Can you draw one more building. A cafeteria. Long tables. Big enough for all of us." Kaia set the spoon down. "My pen went cold after the school. It hasn't warmed back up." "Try." Kaia tried. The pen scratched dry lines on the paper and nothing lifted. She shook her head and would not look up. Ninka sat on the step beside her. She had known this answer was coming. Kaia's gift was spent and might stay spent for a long time. There would be no drawn miracle today. Garrick came over with the pot still in his hand. "You want a hall. You already have stones. You have the hearth Ezra built. You have hands." "We don't have a builder." "You have me," he said. "I built my father's smokehouse when I was twelve. Sylvara can grow a beam faster than I can cut one. Prismella can read a roof out of a book. Storm's hands move stone without touching it. Lilith won't leave her post. The rest of us can lift." Ninka looked at him. He said it the same way he said the stew was ready. "How long," she asked. "Three days. Maybe four. Longer if it rains." They started that afternoon. Storm floated the foundation stones into a rectangle beside the school. Sylvara coaxed white pine up from seed in an hour and Garrick shaped the beams with a hand axe. Prismella read glass and rainbow crystal from Sylvara's book until the walls stood clear and bright. Ninka carried water and passed nails. The children carried nails too. By the fourth evening the hall had a roof, long rows of tables, and the great hearth moved to its far wall, blue flame still steady under the steel pot. Garrick ladled stew down one long table. The children sat shoulder to shoulder for the first time. Kaia laughed at something the fear-pusher said. Ninka ate at the end and counted them. Twelve. One room. One meal. Outside, at the tree line, something moved that was not the statue.