Rowan Hartley's Arc

Chapter 3 of 4

Rowan stepped out of the shed into gray morning light. The map sat folded in her jacket. The direction was set, but her boots were empty of miles and her pack was empty of food. She could not walk a long road on nothing. She turned back to the shed door and went inside. She lifted the hidden floor panel and climbed down into the bunker. Wool blankets. Candles. Cloth-wrapped fish she had cured last fall. She had been stocking this room for years without naming why. Now she knew. She hauled the goods up by the armful and stacked them by the door. The sledge waited under a tarp behind the shed. She dragged it out, checked the runners, and tied the chest down tight. She packed the blankets, the candles, the fish, a coil of rope. She lashed canvas bags to the sides. Each knot was a small answer to a question she had been afraid to ask. She almost closed the lid. Then she stopped. She went back inside and opened the small drawer by her cot. The silver locket lay there, dented, warm from no hand but her own. Inside was her mother's face. Rowan closed it and looped the chain around her neck. The fox-marked puzzle box went into the chest beside the map. She was not leaving either behind. She pulled the sledge down the trail until the trees thinned and the ground turned hard with frost. Ahead stood a wooden bridge, its rails hung with icicles, its planks cracked and pale. On the far side, the trail bent into country she had never walked. She set the rope across her shoulder and stepped onto the boards. The wood held. She did not look back. By the time she reached the other side, her breath was loud and her hands were sore. She was supplied. She was moving. The fear was still there, packed in with the fish and the blankets, but it was traveling with her now, not stopping her. The road had started.