Periwinkle's Arc

Chapter 14 of 17

The bright house kept the lost from fleeing. But a new trouble came with the cold nights. The searchers brought people worn thin from days in the woods. They ate their bread. They warmed by the oven. Then they could not rise to walk home. Their legs shook. Their eyes closed. One old man slept sitting up against the wall. Periwinkle had a house that fed the lost and warmed them, but no place for them to lie down and rest. She stood in the doorway that morning and looked at the bare floor. The oven burned. The bread sat on the rack. But there was no bed, no blanket, no quilt. She had asked the winged woman for so much already. She did not want to ask again. A woman stepped from the trees, carrying a wooden crate against her hip. She had long brown hair and a denim jacket, and she walked like she knew where she was going. The big bear had found her that dawn. Yet she did not look lost. She looked ready. "You feed people here," she said. It was not a question. "I'm Hannah. I make preserves. I heard about a house in the woods with warm bread." She set the crate on the steps. Jars of jam clinked inside. "My grandmother's recipes. I sell them at a market. Figured your bread needed something to go with it." Periwinkle looked at the jars, then at the tired man sleeping against the wall. "They can't leave," she said. "They eat and they're too weak to walk. I have nothing for them to rest on." Hannah looked past her into the house. She saw the bare floor and the sleeping man. She did not soften it. "Then they stay," she said. "You don't send tired people back into the cold. You give them a bed." She pulled off her denim jacket and folded it. She crossed to the sleeping man and slid it under his head. He did not wake. "I don't have beds," Periwinkle said. "You have a house." Hannah pointed to the wide floor around the oven. "Straw. Blankets. I've got wool in my truck at the market. I can bring it. You've got a warm room and no place to sleep in it. That's an easy fix." Periwinkle had spent every hard week asking the winged woman to solve what she could not. This time a stranger stood in her doorway with a plan and a folded jacket. She had built a place that fed the lost and warmed them. Now someone had shown her how to let them stay. By dusk, Hannah returned with wool blankets and clean straw. They spread beds along the walls, close to the oven's heat. The old man woke, ate a jar of jam on warm bread, and lay down. He slept through the night in the bright house, and in the morning he walked home.