Willa Wren's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Willa Wren poured her last vial of silverroot down the drain and watched three weeks of work swirl away. The cure-all had curdled again. Villagers came to her door every day now, hoping for the one potion that healed any ailment, and every day she turned them away with lesser remedies. She knew the legend was real. She had tasted a drop of it once, long ago, in her grandmother's kitchen. But her grandmother had died before she could write the recipe down. Willa had the ingredients. That was the cruel part. Her stock stood in a mossy heap outside her door, a living mound of roots and mushrooms and flowers, damp and tangled and bursting with power. She knew almost everything that mound could do. She just didn't know the measures, or the order, or the secret step that made the cure-all whole. So she guessed. And every guess cost her another handful of rare ingredients she could not replace. This morning she had nothing left but the mound itself. Willa knelt beside it in the gray light and dug through the stems, searching for a clue she already knew wasn't there. Her braid dragged in the moss. She was tired in a way sleep could not fix. Then something moved deep inside the mound. A small head poked out. Bright blue eyes. Spotted fur. The creature wriggled free and shook itself, and two thin wings opened on its back, shimmering like dragonfly glass. A bobcat cub, no bigger than a loaf of bread. It must have crawled in to sleep among the warm roots. Willa went still, afraid to scare it. The cub sniffed the air. Then it hopped off the mound and trotted down the stone path, the one lined with her little glowing lanterns. It stopped at the third lantern and began to paw at the earth beside it. Willa followed, slow and careful. The cub dug, chirping, and uncovered the corner of a flat stone. She knelt and pried the stone up. Beneath it lay a small tin box, green with age. Her grandmother's box. Willa's hands shook as she opened the lid. Inside, wrapped in waxed cloth, was a single folded page. The ink was faded but the words held. Measures. Order. A note at the bottom in her grandmother's cramped hand: "Brew only at full moon, or it turns to poison." Willa pressed the page to her chest. For the first time in weeks, she laughed out loud. The cub butted its head against her knee, pleased with itself, and she scratched behind its ears. Then she read the note again, and her joy thinned. The next full moon was four nights away. Her ingredients, pulled and torn from the mound all week, would not keep that long. She had the recipe at last. Now she had to keep her stock alive until the moon was right.