Rosie Oakhum's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Rosie Oakhum knew every secret in Ivywood, and it drove her mad that one had slipped past her. She pinned a wet sheet to the line and listened. Two neighbors stood by the well, heads close, whispering. They stopped the moment they saw her. That never happened. People forgot Rosie was there. They talked over her like she was another fence post. But lately, all through the village, mouths shut when she came near. She finished the wash and walked the lane, ears open. Nothing. A door closed too fast. A conversation cut short. Someone was hiding something big, and the whole village seemed to guard it. Rosie had no name, no place, no first thread to pull. A secret with no edge is just a fog. She knelt in her garden that evening to think. Between the cabbages sat a snail, its shell furred with green moss. She almost missed the paper. A scrap stuck to the wet shell, dragged up from somewhere below. Rosie peeled it off. Damp ink, but readable. Half a note in a hand she knew well. Her neighbor's writing. The woman two doors down, who baked bread every Sunday and never missed church. The note read: "...tell no one. Not even Rosie. Meet at the old greenhouse before..." The rest had rotted away. Rosie sat back on her heels. Her heart thumped. Not even Rosie. They had named her. They planned around her. She had a place now, the old greenhouse, and a face, and a time she'd have to guess. She went that same night. The greenhouse stood behind her neighbor's garden, glass cracked, roof half caved. Inside, weeds pushed through the floor. On a warped bench sat a strange flower, red petals thick with fine hairs, like fur. No such flower grew in Ivywood. Someone had brought it here. Someone had tended it. A fat bumblebee crawled across the petals. Its body glowed pink and black, wings the color of a bruise. Rosie had never seen its like. She stepped closer, and the bee lifted off, heavy and slow, and drifted out through a broken pane into the dark. So this was the secret. Not gossip. Not a love affair. Something grew here that did not belong. Her quiet baking neighbor kept it, and half the village helped her hide it. Rosie touched a furred petal. It was warm. Alive. She had her thread at last. But she still didn't know what it meant, or who else was in on it, or why they had worked so hard to keep it from her, of all people. She left the greenhouse before dawn, the note folded in her apron pocket. Tomorrow she would watch her neighbor. Tomorrow she would find out what the flower was for. For the first time in years, Rosie Oakhum was the one who didn't know. She meant to fix that.