Summer Sun's Arc

Chapter 8 of 15

The snow kept falling. Summer Sun watched Matilda's black shape reach the tree line and vanish into the brambles around her crooked cottage. Granny Weatherby went back inside the barn to stoke the stove. Angela stood beside Summer Sun in the doorway, antennae twitching against the cold. "She'll hurt someone," Angela said. Flat. A fact. Summer Sun nodded. She had spent a lifetime making grumpy people laugh. She had never met rage like this, and she had nothing in her pockets that would touch it. A joke would bounce off. A song would make it worse. She needed to try something else, and she needed to try it now, before Matilda picked her small revenge. Summer Sun pulled her coat tight and stepped into the snow. Angela hurried after her. "Where?" Angela asked. "To her," Summer Sun said. "Empty-handed. No trap. No plan." Angela stopped walking for one step, then caught up. They crossed the white meadow together. Summer Sun's hands shook inside her sleeves. She kept walking. She thought of the person who had lasted three weeks against her. She had cracked him with patience, not with a joke. She hoped patience was still a tool she owned. The brambles around the cottage had grown thicker. Matilda sat on the front step in the snow, cloak muddy, hands open on her knees. She did not stand when they came near. She did not shout. She looked up, and her face was not wild anymore. It was tired. "Come to gloat," she said. "No," Summer Sun said. She sat down in the snow across from her. Angela sat too. Summer Sun did not smile. She did not sing. She said, "I'm sorry you're this angry. I don't know how to fix it. I wanted you to know I'm here anyway." Matilda stared at her. Her mouth twisted. She waited for the trick. The trick did not come. A long minute passed. Matilda's shoulders dropped an inch. Not laughter. Not softness. Just a crack, small and real, in the wall. "Get off my step," Matilda said. Quiet. No venom. Summer Sun stood. Angela stood. They walked back across the meadow. Halfway across, Angela said, "You didn't make her laugh." "No," Summer Sun said. "I didn't try." She had gone to a furious witch with nothing and come back without a scratch. The rage had not broken. But it had bent, once, for a breath, when she stopped performing. She understood now what the finale would ask of her. Not a joke. Not a clever line. Something harder. She walked toward the barn with the snow melting on her cheeks and did not wipe it away.