Summer Sun's Arc

Chapter 2 of 15

Summer Sun watched Matilda march across the field. The witch's boots crushed the grass flat. Behind her, the empty jar sat by the cauldron, and the wet patch of dirt was already drying in the sun. Angela hid behind the thermometer. Summer Sun did not hide. She had spent the morning getting ready for a grumpy visitor, and a grumpy visitor was coming. Near the edge of the meadow stood an old split-rail fence with half its boards missing. Matilda hit it shoulder-first and a rotten post snapped under her weight. She kept walking. On her belt, tied by a cord, a small red creature thrashed and snarled. It had horns and claws and a face like a kettle about to whistle. Every step Matilda took, it shrieked. Summer Sun had never seen one before, but she knew rage when it was leashed to a person's hip. In the middle of the meadow, Summer Sun had set up a tall pole. From the top hung a single bright feather, blue and gold, turning slow in the warm air. She had spent an hour tying it just right so it would brush the face of anyone who stood beneath it. It was her best trick. No one had ever stood under a tickling feather and stayed angry. Not once in fifteen years. Matilda reached the pole. The feather swung down and touched her nose. She did not flinch. She did not blink. She reached up, closed her fist around the feather, and tore it off the string. Then she dropped it in the grass and stepped on it. The little red creature at her belt laughed instead, a sharp ugly sound, and Matilda's mouth stayed flat. "I am not here for a joke," Matilda said. "I am here to tell you something. You poured out my slime. Fine. I have other plans. Stay out of them." She turned and walked back the way she came, past the broken fence, into the trees. Summer Sun knelt and picked up the crushed feather. The barbs were bent. She smoothed them with her thumb anyway. Angela crept out from behind the thermometer. "She didn't laugh." "No," Summer Sun said. She had failed. She had never failed before. She held the bent feather and felt something new and small open up inside her chest, like a window she had not known was there. Then she smiled, because a window was a window. "She didn't laugh today," Summer Sun said. "I will need a bigger plan. And I will need to know what she is planning next." Angela looked toward the trees where Matilda had gone. The leaves still shook where the witch had pushed through.