Sylvie Nettlewick's Arc

Chapter 4 of 4

Sylvie slept badly. The cat curled against her feet, warm and easy, while she stared at the ceiling and counted her coins in her head. Two nights, maybe three. Not a week. By morning she had no plan, only a knot in her chest. She carried her bag down to the common room, where Silas stood at the counter kneading dough. Flour dusted his beard and his broad forearms. He looked up and grinned as if she had slept like a queen. "You've got the face of a woman doing sums," he said. "Sit. Eat. The bread's near done." Sylvie sat. The cat poked its nose from the bag, then climbed out and dropped to the floor. It stretched, yawned, and padded straight to the hearth, where it settled in the warm ash-light as if it had lived there all its life. Silas watched it. His grin softened into something thoughtful. "I can't stay the week," Sylvie said. She made herself say it plain. "And even when the library opens, they won't let the cat inside. I've got no safe place to leave it. I came all this way for one room of books, and I may have to turn around before I ever see them." Silas set down his dough. He wiped his hands on his apron and leaned on the counter. "Now that's two problems," he said. "And I've a fix for both, if you'll hear it." He nodded at the cat by the fire. "That creature's happier here than it ever was on the road. Leave it with me while the count runs. I keep the hearth lit all day. It'll eat scraps and sleep fat." Sylvie looked at the cat. Its eyes were shut. Its sides rose and fell. She had carried it two towns, worried over it at the goose's nest, hidden it in her bag. The thought of walking away from it pinched her. "It's not yours to feed," she said. "Nothing's mine till I decide it," Silas said, laughing. "And the room. You can't pay the week, so you'll work it. I've floors to sweep and bread that needs turning and travelers who leave their boots in a heap. A woman who ran a library can run a broom." He pushed a fresh loaf toward her, steam rising off the crust. "Earn your bed. Leave the cat by the fire. Walk up to the Willow Room the day it opens, hands empty, heart easy." Sylvie broke the bread. It was hot and good. She thought of the long road home, and the shelves behind the locked door, and the small warm animal by the hearth. The knot in her chest loosened. "I don't know how to thank you," she said. "Sweep well," Silas said. "That's thanks enough." So Sylvie stayed. She swept the common room each morning and turned the loaves and gathered the boots travelers left strewn by the door. The cat grew bold and fat. It claimed the hearth, then the windowsill, then Silas's lap when he counted coins at night. By the fourth day it no longer looked at the door. By the sixth it did not look up when Sylvie passed. She saw it had found its home, and that she could leave it without fear. On the seventh morning the count ended. Silas pressed a packet of bread and cheese into her hands and walked her to the porch. The cat watched from the sill, unbothered. "Go on," he said. "It'll be here when you're done reading." Sylvie walked up the road with empty arms. A vine climbed the inn's porch post beside her, heart-shaped leaves and blue trumpet blossoms open to the morning. She passed the apple trees and the goose on its nest. This time she tossed a windfall apple into the grass, and the goose waddled after it, and she walked by clean and unhurried. The library door stood open. No one stopped her. No bag shifted on her shoulder. She stepped inside the Willow Room. Shelves rose to the rafters, crowded with books, every spine counted and in its place. Light fell through tall windows onto the reading tables. The librarian glanced up, saw no cat, and said nothing. Sylvie stood still a moment and breathed it in. She had left Pinehollow after sixty years. She had crossed two towns, outlasted a goose, a locked door, and an empty purse. She had found a place for the cat and a place for herself. Now she walked to the nearest shelf, drew down a book, and sat to read the first of many libraries her memoir had promised her.