Rose Smith's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Rose had Aster on her hip by the time the sun cleared the ridge. He was almost a year old now and heavier every week, but she had learned to balance him against the curve of her ribs so her hands stayed free. She walked the rows with Dahlia behind her, checking the lavender for the kind of trouble only a witch would notice. A year ago, Rose had come down this same road with nothing but the baby and the people behind her who wanted her burned. Dahlia had opened the door. Rose had been trying to earn it back ever since. She worked the morning straight through. She pinched off the spent stems, hauled two buckets to the drying shed, and fed Aster mashed pear with one hand while she counted inventory with the other. At noon Violet came down from the cottage with bread and cold tea, and Rose took ten minutes to eat standing up. Violet had been at the farm three weeks. She watched Rose the way someone watches a person they are trying to learn from. "You ever sit down," Violet said. Rose smiled and didn't answer. Aster pulled her braid. She kissed the top of his head and went back to the rows. Dahlia found her near the last row before dusk. The old woman looked at the cut stems, then at Rose, then at the baby asleep in the sling. "Good day's work," she said. That was all. Rose took it and held it. From Dahlia, that was a lot. But Dahlia kept walking toward the cottage without inviting Rose to follow, and Rose understood, again, that good day's work and trust were two different shelves. After Aster was down, Rose sat at the kitchen table with the lamp pulled close and made the charms. Dried lavender, twine, a thread of intention pressed in with her thumb. She made eleven before her shoulders started to ache. They were good charms. People in town bought them for colicky babies and bad dreams and the small, soft worries of a quiet life. She lined them up in a row and looked at them. Eleven small things that would help no one with anything that actually mattered. Dahlia was upstairs reading by candlelight, holding back the deep workings, the magic that cost something to do. The wards along the tree line had been broken for weeks before anyone noticed. Charms for colicky babies would not fix that. Rose swept the lavender stems into her palm and dropped them in the bin. She would ask tomorrow. Not for permission, exactly. For the next thing. The real thing, whatever it cost her, whatever it looked like. She had spent a year proving she could carry the baby and the buckets and the bundles of dried flowers. That was the floor. She wanted the rest of the house.