Periwinkle's Arc

Chapter 8 of 17

By morning the bears had not come back. Periwinkle stood at her door with warm loaves cooling on the sill. The young man had returned last night, fed and calm, guided home by the big bear. But the bears themselves had vanished into the trees. She needed them to keep returning, and wild creatures owed her nothing. Her oven still baked only a dozen loaves an hour, and the lost kept coming. Without the bears, the forest could not share her work. She walked into the trees to find them. The ground gave no tracks. Then she saw it: a tall, slender cypress standing apart from the rest, its layered green branches nearly brushing the ground. Beneath it lay the little bear, curled in the dry needles. The big bear sat beside it, watching her come. Periwinkle knelt. "You waited here," she said. "Not at my door. Here." The cypress had sheltered them through the night, dry and hidden, the way the hollow had once sheltered her. The bears had not abandoned her. They had only chosen a better place to rest. An idea took shape. The bears would not sit at her door for scraps. But they would come to a place that gave them something too. She looked up at the cypress, tall enough to see from the clearing, its shape unlike any tree nearby. A marker. A meeting spot both she and the bears could find. She went back for bread and a basket. At the foot of the cypress she set down two fresh loaves. The big bear rose and ate one. She held the other out and pointed toward the deep woods. "Bring them here," she said. "Not to my door. To this tree. I will leave bread each morning. You lead the lost to the berries and the stream, then bring them here for a loaf." The big bear took the second loaf in its mouth. It nudged the little one awake. Together they moved off through the trees, unhurried, following a path she could not see. By dusk Periwinkle stood beneath the cypress with a full basket. Hooves sounded first. The winged horse came through the trees, and behind it walked two tired travelers, a woman and a boy, guided by the big bear. The little bear trotted at their heels. The travelers had eaten berries along the way. Now they reached the tree, and Periwinkle placed warm bread in their hands. The bears ate, then lay down in the dry needles beneath the branches. They would stay near the cypress now. It gave them shelter and a steady meal, and it gave her a place to meet the lost the forest carried in. Her single oven no longer had to feed the world alone. But the cypress stood in one clearing, and the forest stretched for miles she had never walked.