Nyssa Greenleaf's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Nyssa walked the edge of the north field at first light. She carried a small basket and a folded cloth, her mind still back at the sickbed where a boy fought to keep water down. She needed to find the plant that had poisoned him, and name it, and learn how to undo what it had done. The soft ground near the drainage ditch gave under her boots. She knelt, parted the grass, and her breath caught. The deep green leaves with their thin white veins were not just by the ditch. They spread past it, into the field, in patches she had not seen yesterday. She followed the trail. Twenty paces on, she stopped. A thick knot of twisted vines coiled around a fallen branch, half-buried in the damp earth. The same white-veined leaves sprouted along its length. She had walked this field a hundred times. This had not been here. Nyssa pressed her hand against the cold ground and made herself say it out loud. "It is spreading." She stood, brushed off her knees, and turned back toward the village. The boy was no longer the only patient she had to worry about.