Skylar's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

The basket split at the handle before Skylar reached the edge of the village. She heard the reed crack, felt the weight shift, and caught the loaf against her hip before it hit the dirt. The jar rolled inside and knocked the salted meat. She stopped in the road and looked down at what she was carrying. She made this trip every season. Her grandmother could no longer walk the path, so Skylar walked it for her. Bread, salted meat, a jar of preserves the old woman had put up last summer. Skylar had stopped asking what was in the jar. She had stopped counting the trips after three or four. The village watched her leave each time, and each time she came back, which was more than the last person who used the path had done. The basket she carried now was new. The old one had cracked over the summer, and someone in the village had woven this one fast, from thin autumn reeds still green at the core. Skylar had felt the give in it when she packed it that morning. She had told herself it would hold. Ahead of her, the path ran into the woods under a scatter of red and gold leaves. It was a long walk. Rough ground. Roots. Places where she had to climb over a fallen trunk with both hands. A basket that failed halfway would spill the jar into the dirt, and her grandmother checked the food when Skylar arrived before she ate anything. A ruined delivery meant a hungry week. Skylar turned around and walked back to the house. She set the basket on the table and pulled her red hood off her shoulders. The hood was heavy wool, cut wide, meant for weather. She spread it flat and laid the bread, the meat, and the jar in the center. She folded the wool over them, corner to corner, and tied the ends into a knot she could sling across her back. She tested the weight against her spine. The jar sat snug against the bread. Nothing shifted. She left the basket on the table. She walked out bareheaded into the cold, the bundle tight between her shoulder blades, and started up the path. Leaves covered the ground in a thick drift, orange and brown and rust, hiding the roots. She went slower now. Her ears were uncovered for the first time on this walk, and she could hear everything: her own boots, the wind in the branches, and, somewhere off to her left, the soft break of a twig under a paw. She kept walking. The food was safe on her back. But she had traded one problem for another, and she knew it before she was ten steps into the trees.