Tilda Marsh's Arc

Chapter 4 of 4

The trouble came before the sun cleared the hills. Word of Tilda's whistle-blowers had spread from house to house, and now a knot of villagers crowded her bakery steps. They pushed their children behind their legs. A mother gripped Tilda's sleeve. "Hide us," she begged. "Don't teach our young ones to fight giants. Bury us in the cellars until it passes." Others nodded, pale and shaking. Tilda saw the fear catch and spread like fire in dry grass. Tilda did not argue. She unhooked three giant teeth from her belt and set them on the flour barrel. "These were dropped by things that hunted us," she said. "I dropped them with a sling I braided from my own hair. Cellars hold you until a giant smells you through the floor. Then there is no door strong enough." The villagers muttered. A cellar felt safe. A sling in a child's hand did not. Tilda saw she was losing them. She needed proof, not words. Ned pushed through the crowd, his map crushed under one arm and his ink-stained fingers tight on the whistle at his belt. He was the mapmaker she was training to take her place. "Show them, Tilda," he said quietly. "Show them what the young ones can do." Then a shape moved behind the crowd. An ash-gray dire wolf padded from the tree line, broad as a plow horse, yellow eyes fixed on the children. Mothers screamed and clutched their young. Some turned to run for the cellars. Tilda did not run. Finn Varrow stepped out beside her, the boy who swept these steps every morning and held himself like he owned the hills. He had burned two giant corpses without flinching. Now he put two fingers to his mouth and looked at Tilda. She gave one nod. "Whistle," Tilda said. Ned blew three sharp notes. The wolf's ears flattened. Its head swung toward the sound, confused, its charge broken. In that gap Tilda loosed her braided sling. The stone cracked against the wolf's skull. It stumbled, yelped, and bolted back into the trees, tail low. The steps went silent. A small girl slipped from behind her mother's legs and picked up a stone from the yard. She turned it over in her palm, then looked up at Tilda. Tilda knelt to the girl's height. "That is how," she said. "Not hiding. Standing. One blows, one throws. A giant is slower than that wolf, and just as blind to two of you working together." The mother who had begged for a cellar wiped her face. She pulled her son forward instead of back. "Teach him," she said. "Teach him proper." By midday, six more children stood in Tilda's yard with stones in their fists. The fear had turned. But six new mouths meant six new families watching, and Tilda had only one whistle and one sling to train them all.