Sienna Du’for's Arc

Chapter 6 of 19

The man in the gray coat did not stay long. He asked Sienna what Clementine had said at the end, and Sienna gave him the small true parts she could spare. He listened with his hands folded. When she was done he touched the bark once, low on the trunk, and said he would not come again. He said it hurt more to see the tree than to picture it. Then he walked out of the grove and left Sienna alone on the bricks with the wide trunk and the blue flowers overhead. She stayed. She told the tree about the mill first, because that was easy. Then she told it about her sister, the older one, the one she had loved before she learned to fear her. "She used to braid my hair," Sienna said. "She was patient with it. She sang the counting song for the plaits." A shadow crossed the bricks. A young woman stood at the edge of the grove with her hands clasped in front of her. "Forgive me," the woman said. "I did not mean to listen. It is only such a beautiful tree." She had freckles and yellow hair loose to her waist. Sienna wiped her face and said the tree was beautiful, yes. The woman looked up into the canopy. "I wish I held that," she said. "To be looked at that way. To be stopped for." She said her name was Amelia. She sat down on the bricks a careful distance away, as if Sienna were a bird she did not want to spook. They talked. Amelia asked small questions and did not push at the answers. She noticed the tremor in Sienna's hands and the hollow under her jaw. "When did you last eat," she said. Sienna could not remember. Amelia stood, brushed her trousers, and walked off without waiting for permission. She came back with bread, a wedge of hard cheese, and two pears in a cloth. She set the cloth between them and tore the bread in half. "Eat the pear first," Amelia said. "It's kinder on an empty stomach." Sienna ate. The pear was cold and clean. For the first time today someone had looked at her long enough to see she was hungry, and had done something about it, and had not asked her name twice. Across the grove, past the low wall, a man in a black coat with a new mustache stood in the shade of another tree and watched them. Amelio did not step out. Amelia was there, and Amelia would not let him take a girl she had decided to feed. He kept still and marked the grove, the bricks, the bread. He could wait. Sienna, on the bricks, did not see him. She took another bite and, for one careful minute, believed she had made a friend.