Rowan Pinwell's Arc

Chapter 8 of 8

Rowan carried the four scraps back through the quiet lanes to their cottage. The reed roof sagged under morning damp, and a dark owl watched from the eave post, still as bark. Rowan went inside and laid the scraps on the table under the window. Three were creased but whole. The fourth was the one the thief had crushed. It was torn clean across, and one half was missing a wedge the size of a thumbnail. Rowan turned the wedge over. No name. No date. Just three words in faded ink: I let him. Rowan knew every hand on the board. They had pinned each confession themselves. But this scrap had been softened by sweat and wind, and the ink had bled at the edges. The letters could belong to two people. The midwife, who had written of a birth she could not save. Or the smith's widow, who had written of a man she had not stopped from walking into the river. Pin it under the wrong name and the wrong person would come apart at the edges by nightfall. Rowan opened the leather journal from the shelf. Pressed moss leaves slid loose as they turned pages. Rowan had copied the first line of every confession into the back, years ago, in case the board ever burned. Rowan ran a finger down the list. Both women had used the same three words. Rowan had copied them twice, in two different years, and never noticed. Rowan sat down on the bench outside the door, the one with the old initials cut into the slats. The owl shifted above. Rowan thought about walking to the midwife's house and asking. But the town would not open a door to Rowan now. Not after the lie in the square. Rowan went back inside and looked at the scrap again. The paper itself was thin cream stock. The midwife used cream. The smith's widow used grey. Rowan held the torn piece up to the window. Cream. Rowan checked it against the other three scraps on the table to be sure. Cream, clean, no grey fibers. The midwife's, then. Rowan let out a breath they had been holding since dawn. Rowan mended the tear with a strip of rice paper and a smear of paste from the jar by the sink. The wedge was still missing. Rowan wrote the three words back in by hand, matching the slant as close as the journal showed. It was not perfect. A mend was not the same as whole. But the scrap could go back on the board under the right pin, and the midwife would not come apart tonight. Rowan slid all four scraps into their coat and stood. The mended one felt heavier than the others. Rowan had guessed right this time. The board was waiting, and every other confession pinned there was still tearing, and Rowan had only paper and paste and one good guess left in them.