Sage winterwood's Arc

Chapter 15 of 29

The buck's plot had bought Sage two days of peace. Now the peace was ending. She knelt at the tilled rows and pushed her fingers into the soil. Under the surface it was pale and thin, more grit than earth. The oats and clover had sprouted in weak green threads, not the thick mat she needed. The buck stood at the edge, watching her. Its ribs still showed. This grass would fail before it fed him, and then he would turn back to her rare seedlings. Sage could not wake dead stone, and she would not drain her glow again. But grass did not need divine soil. It needed feeding. She went to her shed and searched the shelves until she found the small pouch her mother had left. Faint sigils glowed on its cloth. Moonroot fertilizer, marked in her mother's hand. She had saved it, unsure where it was needed most. Here, she decided. She carried the pouch to the plot and loosened its cord. Inside lay dark crumbs that smelled of wet earth and root. She walked the furrows and pressed pinches into the soil beside each thin sprout. Her hands worked steadily down every row. When the pouch was empty she watered the plot from her can, soaking it until the rows shone. Then she scattered the last of the meadow sachet, oats and dried berry and grass seed, over the bare patches between. By morning the change was plain. The thin threads had thickened into a low green carpet. New blades pushed up where she had sown. The soil that had been gray grit now held moisture and root. Sage knelt and pulled at a clump. It held firm, feeding on the moonroot beneath. She let out a breath. The plot would hold now. It would grow back faster than the buck could crop it. The buck lowered its head and grazed. It ate without fear, without watching her. Its jaw worked the thick grass, and for the first time its eyes lost their hunted look. Sage sat on the turned edge and watched him fill himself. The silver marks along his flank caught the early light. Movement at the far side made her turn. A doe stepped from the rocks, slower than the buck, ears forward. Behind her a family of rabbits crept between the stones, each a different color, noses twitching toward the green. The scent of the forage had carried past her fence. Word of food had spread. Sage looked at the small plot, cropped and grazed already at one corner. One buck it could feed. A herd it could not. She had solved his hunger and drawn the whole wild to her door. Her garden was famous now among the animals, and every mouth would come to eat. She would have to grow more forage than she had ever planned, or watch them turn, all of them, toward her rare and precious rows.