Sienna Du’for's Arc

Chapter 4 of 19

Sienna came back to the grove the next evening with her hands still whole and her chest tight. Clementine was already on the bricks, robe folded neat around her, pendant warm in her lap. Neither of them said hello. Sienna sat down close enough that their sleeves touched. "I have no way to keep you," she said. "No letter reaches a tree. No name I can call." Clementine looked at the ferns. "Then don't try to keep me. Sit with me tonight." Sienna nodded. She had run four days for a quiet corner of the world, and the only person who knew her real name would be bark by morning. She decided she would stay until sunrise. She would not sleep first. They talked the way people talk when there is no next time. Clementine described the room she grew up in, the tutors who taught her only what a tree needed to know, the mother she had stopped visiting because looking hurt. Sienna told her about the corridor outside her sister's chambers, the guards who reported every step, the marriage contracts stacked in a drawer she was not allowed to open. They found the same shapes in different rooms. Clementine laughed once, short and surprised, when Sienna described stealing plain clothes from a laundry maid. Sienna laughed at Clementine's story of hiding a novel inside a book of prayers for two years. Near midnight Clementine said, "I asked to go early because my mother is dying inside the wood. No one else knows. Don't tell them." Sienna said, "I won't. I have no one to tell." Clementine closed the subject with, "Good." The moon moved. Their voices got smaller. Sienna felt the fear come up in Clementine's shoulder against hers, and she felt her own fear answer it. She put her arm around Clementine. Clementine leaned in without a word. They held on the way children hold in a dark room. Sienna meant to stay awake. She did not. Sometime before dawn they slid down against each other on the bricks, Clementine's hair across Sienna's collarbone, Sienna's hand closed around the pendant they had not spoken about. The grove was quiet. The last night ended while they slept.