Rosalind Emberheart's Arc

Chapter 4 of 7

Rosalind walked back through the picket line with the scout's wingbeat still fading east. The tribe was waiting at the round. She had bought them a quarter hour and spent it on a fire fairy. Now she had no opening line. She had rehearsed three versions on the walk to the tree line, and all three assumed she would speak first, before rumor did. The scout had taken that assumption with him. She stopped at the edge of the shelters. Her second stood by the first fire pit and did not ask where she had been. The tribe stood in loose rings around the round, wings folded, faces turned toward the platform. The elder stood at the back with his arms crossed. He had kept his word. He was watching to see what she did with it. Rosalind stepped onto the platform with nothing ready. The silence held for one breath, then two. She felt it start to harden the way ice hardens on a slow creek. If she waited a third breath, she would lose them before she opened her mouth. Her hand went to the satchel strap out of habit, and her thumb found the burn ring in the leather. She unbuckled the satchel and drew out the journal she carried for tribe records. The cover was scorched along one edge, etched with ember lines she had never explained. She had kept it that way for four hundred years and told anyone who asked that it was old. She held it up so the front rows could see the burn. "This is mine," she said. "I burned it. I was nine." Her voice carried without effort. "My father was a fire fairy. My mother was your love fairy elder before me. I have led you for four hundred years with both in my hands. I am telling you now because in three days I ride to Blazen Emberwing's camp, and he will already know. I wanted you to know first." She set the journal on the platform between herself and the tribe. No one spoke. A blue-marked butterfly lifted from a canopy rope and drifted across the round. The elder at the back uncrossed his arms. In the front ring, a young fairy she had taught to fly took one step forward, then stopped, waiting to see who moved next. Rosalind did not fill the silence. She had learned that much from the scout. Her second was the one who broke it. She stepped up onto the platform, picked up the journal, and held it against her chest without opening it. She said, loud enough for the back rings, that the tribe would hear the rest at the fire pit and vote before sundown. It was not loyalty. It was a hearing. Rosalind took the journal back, stepped down, and understood that she had bought herself the day, and nothing past it.