Raven Meadows's Arc

Chapter 12 of 25

Willow's question sat in Raven's chest all week. How many can you feed before you can't feed anyone? The gnome's weekly herb trade brought grain and roots, but not enough. Now the huts were full, and every stomach in them was empty. By the third morning, the newcomers started muttering at the reeds. A thin creature knocked a bowl from Finn's hands and snarled. Hungry things don't wait quietly, and Raven knew it would get worse before noon. She walked out to the treeline to think and found two centaurs standing over a dead bull elk. Twins. Broad backs, dark braided hair, spotted flanks. She had seen them pass at the edge of the marsh before, hunting, saying nothing. They had tracked this elk three days. One held perfectly still. The other shifted his hooves, restless. "That's a lot of meat," Raven said. "More than two people eat." The still one looked at her. "We know." "I've got twenty mouths and no food. I can't pay you." She hated the words as they left her. "But I've got a greenhouse full of herbs and a fire that stays lit." The restless one glanced at his brother. They did not speak. They just looked at each other, the way people do who have shared one mind their whole lives. "We hunt for those who cannot," the still one said at last. "Our father was fed that way once." "We are not fast at building," the restless one added. "We are fast at this." Raven led them back through the mud. The huts went silent when the elk came in. Finn's ears lifted. Torryn helped hang the meat and dried strips over careful flame. But raw meat rots, and Raven had no store, no proper stall to keep it. She needed a way to hold food and hand it out fair. That afternoon she tore weathered boards from her own dwindling stack and built a market stall in the yard. Vines still clung to the driftwood. She stacked crates beneath the canopy and laid out what she had: dried elk, roots from the greenhouse, the gnome's grain, a few late fish. The Gemini Brothers hauled the last of the carcass onto the boards without a word. By dusk the queue that had snarled and shoved now formed a line at the stall. Raven handed portions across the boards, one to each, no more. The muttering stopped. Bellies filled. For the first time, no one at the reeds looked at her with hungry, flat eyes. "We will hunt again next moon," the still brother said, already turning to go. Raven watched them cross the mud. She had food now, and a way to share it. But the stall told a plain truth she couldn't unsee. She was no longer sheltering a few strays. She was feeding a village, and villages draw eyes that want to own them.