Peach Bloomshade's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

The road to the healing falls was long, and Peach carried a fear she had not told Timber. She could lose days at any moment. If a blackout took her on the trail, she might wake far from him, deep in the trees, where the blight could reach her. So they stopped first at a grove of magical fruit trees, heavy with pink, purple, and rainbow-colored fruit. They needed food for the journey. But Peach needed something more. "We fill the packs here," Timber said. He pulled a ripe purple fruit from a low branch and tested its weight in his palm. He worked fast, sorting the good from the soft, the way he sorted rope by feel. Peach picked beside him, but her hands slowed. Her fingers had gone numb again. It always started this way, right before the days slipped. "It's coming," she said. "A blackout. I can feel it in my hands." She had kept him at arm's length for weeks, afraid of dragging him deeper. But out here, alone, the truth was simple. "If I go under on the road, I could wander off. I could wake somewhere the rot can find me." Timber set the fruit down. He did not soften it. "Then you don't wander off." He unwound a length of cord from his belt, the same rope from his shop. "When your hands go numb, you tell me. I tie a line from your wrist to mine. You can't walk off if you're tied to me." Peach stared at the cord. It was such a plain answer that she almost laughed. Her grandmother had spent a whole life chasing the curse and never thought of it. "You'd sleep tied to me? For days?" "My grandfather planted half our grove by hand," Timber said. "He told me elves who forget their roots stop being elves. You don't leave your own behind." He held out the rope. "You're my own now." She took it. She looped one end around her wrist and drew it tight. He tied the other to his own. That night they ate the sweet fruit under the stars, wrists bound between them, and they talked. He told her about the birches his grandfather planted. She told him about the butterfly clip her grandmother left facing the door. They both missed home. They both wanted the blight gone. The numbness climbed her arms as the fire burned low. Peach did not fight it. She felt the cord tug snug against her wrist and let the dark come. She woke to daylight. Two days gone. The fruit packs sat full beside her, and Timber sat awake at the fire, the rope still knotted to his wrist. She had not moved an inch. For the first time, a blackout had cost her nothing. The road to the falls was open, and she would not wake it alone.