Rosie Roo's Arc

Chapter 5 of 10

Rosie crossed the water at dawn, her bag heavy with her grandmother's almanac. Past the wild strawberries, the ground rose into a dry hummock. There, in a nest of woven reeds, an old fairy sat mending a wing with a needle of bone. Her skin was the brown of dead leaves. She did not look up. "I know your spore," the fairy said. "The last one. It bends. It wants to die." She set down her needle. "I can teach you to save it. But I take knowledge for knowledge. Tell me something I have never heard. Something rare." Rosie opened the almanac. She read of fog and misted blooms and sealed glass. The fairy waved her hand. "Old news. I knew fog before your grandmother was born." She turned back to her wing. "Go home, girl. You have nothing for me." Rosie's chest went tight. She had crossed the marsh for this. She pictured the spore in the greenhouse, its cap sinking toward white. She had no rare secret. She had only what she carried, and a road home too long for a dying spore. Then a branch cracked behind her. Rosie turned. A white fox stepped from the reeds. Nine tails fanned behind it. A gold horn rose from its brow, thin as a spear of light. It watched Rosie with calm amber eyes, then dipped its head, as if it had chosen to be seen. The old fairy froze. Her needle fell. "That cannot be," she whispered. She rose on shaking legs. "Nine tails. A horn. I heard the last of them died an age ago." Her voice cracked. "Where. Where did it come from?" Rosie looked at the fox. The fox looked back and waited. And Rosie understood. Here was the rare thing. Not a fact from a book. A living creature the fairy had believed gone forever. "It found me on the water," Rosie said. That was true. "It walks where I walk. If you want to know it, you trade with me first." The fairy's greed swallowed her pride. "Yes. Yes. The spore." She spoke fast now. "It needs no more fog. It needs warmth held still, and one drop of your own breath each dawn. Speak to it. A spore this old grows toward a voice. Starve it of words and it dies, though you drown it in fog." Rosie's mind raced. Breath. A voice. Not fog at all. She had almost let it wilt in silence. "Now," the fairy said, leaning close, "the fox." But the fox was already turning. It slipped into the reeds and was gone. The fairy howled and clawed at the empty air. Rosie ran for the water while the fairy wailed. She had her answer. She had it whole. But the greenhouse stood a full day away, and her spore had gone unspoken to for far too long.