Will bush's Arc

Chapter 41 of 41

The next morning Will woke before Kate. The cottage was quiet. He stood at the window and watched the new patch by the hedge. Butterflies were already at work in the flowers. He remembered Pimble's promise to bring the others for cake, and he understood he had nothing to offer them. Kate had baked the cake yesterday from what the cottage gave her. That was hers. He wanted something of his own to set down at the hedge. He walked out to the flat rock where they had eaten. The plate was still there, wiped clean. He turned it in his hands. He thought of what the gnomes had lost. Three winters without butterflies. A garden gone quiet. He thought of the daisies he had watched for five years and how one small patch had held a life together. Kate came out with two mugs. She saw him with the empty plate and stopped. "They're coming today," Will said. "I have nothing for them." "There's cake left," Kate said. "Cake is what you brought. I want to bring something." She set the mugs on the rock. She looked at the new patch, then at the hedge, then at him. "Plant them one of their own," she said. "Something that stays." Will knelt by the hedge. He pressed his hand to the dirt the way Pimble had pressed his ear. He didn't hear anything. But he remembered how the daisies had opened for him when he asked, and how the cherry tree had held him when he had nowhere else to go. He asked the ground for a border. A line of small blooms along the hedge, one their people could walk beside. The dirt warmed under his palm. Green shoots pushed up in a thin row against the leaves. They lifted, split, opened. Small white flowers with yellow centers ran the length of the hedge like a stitched hem. Kate stood behind him and didn't say anything. Branches parted. Pimble stepped out with three others behind him. Their heads were small under crowns of leaves. They stopped when they saw the border. Pimble knelt and touched one flower. He held it a long moment. Then he pressed his ear to the dirt beside it. "You asked," he said. "I asked," Will said. Pimble stood. He looked at the other three. One of them, a woman with a beard shorter than his, stepped forward and bowed her small head to Kate. "You mark the line," Pimble said to Will. "That's a gift we take." Kate cut cake onto the plate and passed it down. The gnomes sat in the grass by the border and ate. The butterflies moved from the patch to the new flowers and back. Pimble drank from Kate's mug and set it down carefully. "Neighbors, then," he said. "Neighbors," Will said.