Sienna Du’for's Arc

Chapter 11 of 19

Sienna told him about the tree. She told him about the bricks and the bread and the ribbon. She told him Clementine had asked to go early because her mother was dying inside the wood. She told him about the pilgrims who thought she was a shrine, and about the nights she talked to bark and pretended it talked back. The boy listened without moving. When she ran out of words, she sat on the moss with her hands open in her lap and waited. Sarec met her gaze. He smiled at her, small and certain. "Your wish has been heard," he said. He lifted one hand. Time started again. A leaf dropped past Sienna's shoulder. Behind her, Elk's boot came down on the path and he stopped hard, off balance, staring at the empty plinth where a stone man had stood a breath before. Sarec looked at Elk once. Elk did not move again. Sarec snapped his fingers. The grove tilted. Sienna felt the moss leave her knees and then felt roots under her palms instead. She was at the base of the tree. The pilgrims at the low wall were on their feet. An old woman had dropped her cup. They were not looking at Sienna the way they usually looked at her. They were staring past her, mouths open, one man on his knees already. Sienna turned. The bark of the trunk was moving. It folded back like cloth pulled aside, and a young woman stepped down out of the wood. Bare feet on the roots. Long yellow hair. The white robe she had been wearing the last night they slept on the bricks. Clementine looked at her hands first, then at the sky, then at Sienna. Her face did not know what to do. Sienna's legs went before her mind did. They hit each other hard enough to knock the breath out of both of them and held on. Sienna felt Clementine's fingers dig into her back. Neither of them let go. Clementine spoke into her shoulder, flat and quick. "I heard you. Every day. I heard all of it." The pilgrims were whispering now, some crying, some backing away from the wall. Sienna did not look at them. She kept her face against Clementine's hair and understood, in a slow cold way, that the story about old blood had just become something worse. A tree had given a girl back. People had seen it. Word would move faster than any rider. Elk was still standing on the path behind her, watching, and he had a horse and six months of road under him. But Clementine was breathing against her neck, warm, human, here. Sienna tightened her grip and decided the rest could wait one more minute.