Thornwyn Mossbrook's Arc

Chapter 1 of 38

Thornwyn Mossbrook stopped at the tree line for the fourth time that morning. The village roofs sat close enough to count. Her boots would not move. Three days she had paced this edge, wanting a child to raise, wanting a voice in her cottage that was not her own. The orphanage stood past the well. She could not cross the open field to reach it. Last time she tried, a child threw bread at her head and the mother laughed. Thornwyn had walked back into the forest for an hour without stopping. Her staff knew the way home better than her feet did. The crow on her shoulder shifted. It pecked her ear once, hard, then flew. She watched it land on the back of a deer she had not noticed standing ten paces off. The deer's coat was patchwork brown and white, its tail longer than any deer's tail had a right to be. It did not startle. It looked at her the way animals looked at her, which was to say, plainly. Thornwyn held out her hand. The deer stepped closer and pushed its nose into her palm. Warm breath. Wet nose. A choice made by something with no reason to choose her. "I can't go alone," she said. The deer walked past her toward the field. Two steps. It stopped and looked back. Thornwyn's throat closed. She had come for a child. She was being led by a deer. But her feet moved this time. The deer matched her pace. The crow returned and landed on the deer's back, and the three of them walked out from under the trees into open sun. Halfway across the field, a woman by the well stopped drawing water to watch them. A boy pointed. Thornwyn's face went hot. She kept walking because the deer kept walking, and because turning back now would mean turning back from her staff, from the crow, from the animal that had chosen her at the tree line. She reached the orphanage door. The deer stopped at the step. It would not come inside, and she understood that. Thornwyn knocked. A woman answered — apron stained with porridge, one hand on the frame like she was already tired of whoever stood outside. Her eyes went to the deer, then the crow, then Thornwyn's staff. Her mouth opened. It closed. "I've come about a child," Thornwyn said. The woman looked past her at the villagers gathering in the lane. She stepped back and held the door wider. "Then you'd better come in before they get loud," she said. Thornwyn crossed the threshold. The door shut behind her. Outside, the deer lay down on the step to wait.