Stella Brightwell's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Stella Brightwell held a winged golden retriever in her arms and no place to put him. The dog licked her chin. His pastel wings brushed her cheek. She had found him three days ago, tangled in a thorn hedge, and now he slept in her tiny kitchen with a chipmunk who breathed smoke. Her whole life she had wanted one thing: a rescue and petting zoo for creatures like these. She had the creatures. She had no land. Her glittery bungalow could not hold them. The smoke-chipmunk had already scorched a curtain. The retriever knocked a lamp off the table when his wings caught a breeze. Stella loved every one of them, but she could not keep rescuing animals into a house that fit one person and a kettle. So she walked up the hill to the only person in Warthollow with land to spare. The village duchess lived in a crooked manor surrounded by fields nobody used. Stella had met her once at market and never forgotten the feathers in her hair. She found the duchess kneeling in mud, painting a fence post bright orange. Feathers stuck out of her wild curls. Her coat was splattered with a dozen colors. "You're the sparkle girl," the duchess said without looking up. "The one who talks to squirrels." "Cordelia Ashworth," Stella said. "I need land. Your east field. For a rescue." The retriever wriggled free and bounded across the mud. His wings shimmered pink and blue in the sun. Cordelia dropped her brush. She watched the dog roll in the grass, wings spread wide. For a long moment she said nothing. "A flying dog," she whispered. "I paint the strangest things and nobody buys them. But that—that is stranger than anything I've imagined." "There are more," Stella said. "A chipmunk who breathes smoke. A vine that snaps at fingers. They have nowhere to go." Cordelia stood. Mud dripped from her knees. She circled the retriever slowly, studying his wings like a painting she meant to copy. "Take the east field," she said. "On one condition. I want to paint them. All of them. I want my manor filled with pictures of impossible animals." Stella's heart leapt. "Yes. Yes, of course." Cordelia smiled and shook her hand, leaving orange paint on Stella's palm. "Then it's done. The field is yours." Stella ran home with the news buzzing in her chest. She had land. She had a place. The rescue was real now. But standing in her east field that evening, she saw the truth. Empty grass stretched in every direction. No fences. No shelter. No pens to hold a chipmunk who could burn wood, or a vine that bit. One good gust, and the winged dog would fly clean over the hill. Stella had the space at last. Now she had to build it, before her creatures escaped or hurt someone—and she had no idea where to begin.