Sienna Du’for's Arc

Chapter 3 of 19

Sienna's second shift at the mill was worse than the first. By midmorning her palms had split along the soft creases where her rings used to sit. By afternoon the blisters had opened and wept into the flour. She kept her hands out of sight when the forewoman walked the row, and she kept smiling. Twice the woman looked at her too long. Sienna said the lye soap at home was strong, and her mother made her scrub the vats. The forewoman grunted and moved on. Sienna finished the shift with her fists closed. She left through the side yard and walked upriver without stopping, the pain climbing her arms in a slow steady beat. The grove was quiet. Clementine sat on the brick circle the way she had the night before, pendant in her lap, robe pooled around her ankles. She looked up when Sienna came through the ferns and her eyes went to Sienna's hands before her face. Sienna tried to hide them and gave up. Clementine reached out and turned the palms toward the last of the light. "These aren't a dyer's hands," she said. "Two more days like today and the forewoman will know." She set the pendant against Sienna's right palm and held it there. Warmth ran under the skin. The blisters flattened. The split creases closed. Clementine did the left hand the same way and then sat back, paler than before. "Don't thank me," she said. "I have power I won't need soon. Better it goes somewhere." They sat on the bricks while the sky turned. Sienna asked what kind of man Clementine had wanted to marry, back when marrying was a thing she was allowed to picture. Clementine took a long time to answer. "Someone who read a lot," she said. "Quiet. Bad at jokes." She looked at her hands. "My father told me when I was nine that I could never love anyone. Love takes from the tree. The tree needs everything." She stopped there, the way she stopped when a thing got too close. Sienna filled the space. She told Clementine about the three men her father had picked for her over the years, each one older than the last, each one measured in border towns and grain rights. She said she had lain awake at fourteen counting the years until the wedding she had not chosen. She said she had wanted a boy from the stables who laughed with his whole mouth, and she had never spoken a word to him. Clementine listened. When Sienna finished, Clementine said, "We wanted small lives." Then she closed the subject. Sienna flexed her healed hands in her lap. Tomorrow she could work. The day after that, Clementine would be a tree.