Willa Wren's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

By morning the mound had gone soft. Willa knelt beside it and lifted a handful of roots. They crumbled, brown at the tips. The mushrooms had shrunk. The flowers hung limp. Three more days until the full moon, and her ingredients were dying now. She spread the recipe page flat on a stone and read the measures again. Every version her grandmother had tried used one plant more than any other. Wild thyme. The whole list leaned on it. Willa hurried into her shop. Jars lined the shelves, dusty and quiet. She pulled her dried thyme from a high shelf and crushed a leaf between her fingers. It turned to powder. Dead herbs held no power. The recipe needed fresh thyme, cut living, and she had torn through her own garden weeks ago. She needed a new source before the roots outside gave out. The winged cub trotted past her boots and out the door. It chirped at her from the path, wings flicking. Willa followed. The cub led her past her lanterns to a small willow at the edge of the garden, its branches heavy with pale blossoms. She had never planted it. At its base grew a thick patch of wild thyme, green and fresh, clustered leaves bright with dew. The cub pawed the earth beside it and looked back at her. Willa dropped to her knees and cut a sprig. The smell hit her, sharp and clean. This thyme was alive and strong. But cut thyme would wilt as fast as everything else. She needed it fresh at the exact hour of the full moon, three nights off. Picking it now would waste it. So she did not pick it. She dug instead. Willa lifted the whole thyme patch, roots and soil together, and carried it to a shabby wildflower cart parked by her shop. She packed the roots into the cart bed among the blossoms already there. Living plants kept living. She wheeled the cart to the willow's shade, where the soft light fell cool and even. Then she turned to the dying mound. One by one she moved her failing ingredients into the cart too, nestling roots beside the thyme, laying mushrooms in the damp soil. She watered them from the shop pump. By dusk the cart held her whole stock, alive and breathing, shaded by the willow, the thyme still rooted and green at its center. The crumbling had stopped. Willa sat back on her heels. The cub climbed into the cart and curled among the flowers. She had saved the ingredients. Now she only had to guard them until the moon rose full. She counted her supply again, and her stomach dropped. The recipe called for three full handfuls of thyme. The patch in the cart held barely one. She had enough to keep her ingredients alive. She did not have enough thyme to finish the potion.