Violet Blackstone's Arc

Chapter 10 of 14

Violet walked north through the last of the dark. The trading post lie was loose behind her. Ahead lay the farm, and a door she could not be sure would open. Willow had a full day's head start with the wooden token. Either Colton had believed her, or he had barred the gate against a stranger with Violet's cord in her hand. By dawn she reached the ridge above her fields. She crouched in the ferns and looked down. Smoke rose from the farmhouse chimney in a steady line. The flock was out. She counted the rainbow coats in the pasture and got the number right. No bodies at the tree line. No broken fence. She worked her way down slow, keeping to the hedgerow. The north gate was propped shut with a fresh crossbeam. Someone had cut and set it since she left. She touched the raw wood. Colton's work. She stepped into the yard. The barn door was open. Inside, Willow knelt in the straw with a blue hen in her lap, feeding it grain from her palm. Her dark hair was tangled with bits of hay. She looked up and her whole face lit. "You made it," Willow said. She stood, careful of the hen. "He was watching the road since yesterday noon. I told him you'd come from the south." "He let you in." "He almost didn't." Willow pulled the wooden cord from inside her collar and held it out. "He made me stand at the gate an hour. He asked me three things only you would have told me. I got two right. The third I guessed." "Which did you guess?" "The lambs." Violet took the cord back. It was warm from Willow's skin. A step scraped behind her. Colton stood in the barn doorway, taller than she remembered, an axe held loose at his side. His scars showed pale in the morning light. He did not smile. He looked at her the way a man looks at a promise being kept. "You said you'd come back," he said. "I said it." "Nadia?" "Two days out. A woman and a boy with her. On Dwyn's horses." He set the axe against the wall. "Then we need more beds." "We need more than beds." Violet looked past him at the farmhouse, at the smoke, at the fence he had mended. "Willow found us through the trading post. That means others can. They'll come faster than I planned for." Colton's jaw worked. "How many." "I don't know yet." Willow set the hen down and stepped between them. "Then tell me where to plant, and how deep. If more mouths are coming, we start today." Violet looked at the two of them, at the standing flock and the shut gate, and felt the shape of the place change under her feet. The door had opened. Now she had to feed what walked through it.