Orla Voss's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

The auction bell would ring at noon, and by breakfast half of Crowhollow already believed the plot belonged to the man Orla Voss used to share a bed with. She heard it first from the baker, who wouldn't meet her eye. Then from the boy who sharpened her axes. Her ex had a prior claim, they said. The auctioneer would strike her bid before she opened her mouth. Orla stood in the square with sawdust still on her boots. She had cut and hauled timber for six winters to save for that ridge of pine above the river. She wanted to build a mill on it. She wanted her name on the deed before his shadow crossed it again. A rumor could take that from her by lunch. She knew where rumors went to die. Her grandmother had been buried out of the old parish church on the hill, and every plot line in the valley was written in the ledgers under its bell tower. If her family had ever held that ridge, the record was there. The caretaker let her in without a word. Orla climbed to the vestry and pulled the ledger for the year her grandmother died. Dust rose off the page. She ran a finger down the columns and found the ridge, and beside it her grandmother's name, and a note: passed by private letter to the granddaughter. She remembered then. A folded page with a red wax seal, pressed into her hand at the funeral. She had shoved it in a drawer, angry at everyone, and left it there for years. She ran home. She tore the drawer apart and found the letter under a dried black rose her grandmother had kept from the churchyard. The seal was still whole. Inside, in her grandmother's careful hand, the ridge above the river was named and given to Orla by name. On the path back to the square, a small white fox stepped out of the ferns. Nine tails fanned behind it, each one furred with green moss. It watched her for a breath, then slipped back into the trees. Orla took it for a good sign and kept walking. She reached the square as the auctioneer lifted his hammer. Her ex stood at the front, hat in hand, already smiling like a man who had won. "Before you strike," Orla said, and held up the letter. "Read the seal." The auctioneer broke the wax himself. He read. His face changed. He passed the page to the clerk, who nodded once. "The ridge is not for sale," the auctioneer said. "It's already hers." The crowd turned. Her ex's smile died slow. He folded his hat and pushed through the bodies toward her, and she saw in his eyes he had come to Crowhollow for more than a plot of land. He stopped an arm's length away. "Orla," he said. "We need to talk about your grandmother."