Scarlett Hopper's Arc

Chapter 3 of 33

By morning the rows showed color. Thin green stood up between the beds where the water had gone in. Scarlett walked the line with a brass watering can in her hand and topped off the driest patches. Duke padded beside her, his curled tail sweeping left, his mismatched eyes fixed past the fence line. He stopped and pushed a picture into her head: three figures on the ridge above the district, one with a sack, one with a pipe, watching the green. "How far?" she said. Another picture came. The ridge, closer than she wanted. A hand pointing down at her rows. She set the can down. Scavengers had seen the color. They would come for it, and they would not leave a leaf. She had a day, maybe less. She could not heal what they tore up. Not fast enough. She went to the shed and pulled every length of wire she had. She took the pruners from the nail by the door. Then she walked to the collapsed lots at the edge of the district, where blackberry and thornbush had grown wild over the rubble for years. She cut long runners at the base and dragged them back in bundles, gloves stiff with sap. Duke watched the ridge while she worked. She built the wall in a ring around the green rows. She drove stakes into the soft dirt and wove the thorned canes between them, layer on layer, until the mass stood chest high and an arm thick. She twisted the wire through the canes to hold them tight. Every time she reached in, the thorns caught her wrists and drew blood. She kept going. At the four corners she strung a low trip line between stakes, ankle height, and tied cans of loose nails to the far ends. Anything that pushed through would rattle the whole ring. The ash wind came before she finished the last corner. She pulled the black-and-pink mask over her face and kept tying. Gray rolled down the rows. Her hands shook. She knotted the last wire and stepped back inside the ring. Duke pressed his head against her thigh. A picture came, quieter now: the three figures on the ridge, turning. One pointed at the thorn wall. One shook his head. They moved off along the ridge and did not come down. She sat in the dirt between the rows and let her breath slow behind the mask. The green stood. The wall stood. Her wrists bled in thin lines down to her knuckles. She reached for the watering can and poured the last of it slowly over the nearest bed. The dirt drank it. Duke lay down beside her with his back to the ring, watching the gap she had left for herself at the north end. It was the only way in. It would also be the only way they could come, if they came back at night.