Thistle Warden's Arc

Chapter 6 of 6

Morning brought the saws back. Thistle heard them before she saw them, a thin whine at the road, then the deeper bite as blades met wood. She climbed the roots of the oldest heartwood and watched from the crown of its exposed knees. Briar stayed below with one hand flat to the bark, listening through the tree the way she listened through the swamp. Rusk's crew was working the thin edge of the grove. Young stems. Border trees no wider than a man's thigh. They stepped past every trunk her sister had marked yesterday, the ones scored with fresh company cuts and iron tags. Not one blade touched marked bark. The crew moved in a slow, even line, dropping small timber and stacking it clean. "They're afraid," Briar said from below. Her fingers spread against the red bark. "The trees remember them. They're cutting what they're allowed." Thistle watched a man pass a tagged trunk. He did not look at it. He did not flinch. He set his saw to a slim border pine and worked steady. "No," she said. "Fear scatters men. Look at them. This is measured." She climbed down. Briar followed her along the fence line, past the stumps from the first day, to a marked trunk at the near edge. The company's cut was scored deep across its bark. A green vein still pulsed beneath. At the base, in the sap-dark dirt, Thistle knelt. One clean bootprint. Fresh. Heel and toe pressed square, as if the man had stood a long time. Beside it lay a small sprig, snapped from a low branch. The dark red wood was unbruised. The thorned leaves still held their faint green thread. Someone had cut it careful and set it down careful. No boot had crushed it. No saw had touched the trunk above. Briar crouched beside her. She lifted the sprig into her palm. "Someone kept this one whole." "Someone marked which ones to leave." Thistle pressed her thumb to the bootprint. Not Rusk's tread. Smaller. A younger man's weight. "They tagged the heartwood so the crew would know not to cut it. And Rusk lets them." Briar's eyes went to the crew down the line. "Or Rusk told them." Thistle stood. Across the grove, the young logger who had not lifted his blade yesterday was working the thin timber with the others. He did not look up. His saw stayed low. He passed a marked trunk without slowing and cut clean into a border stem. She closed her hand around the sprig. The grove had not been spared by her magic. Someone inside the company had bought her time, tree by tree. She did not know his price. She did not know what he would ask when he came to name it. "We hold the line," she told Briar. "But we owe someone now. And I don't know his face."