Wren Kael's Arc

Chapter 2 of 4

Wren left the crossroads at dawn, the path to the far field under her feet. Her fox limped ahead. Then a cough climbed out of her chest. It glowed. A faint light spilled from her mouth into the cold air. She stopped and pressed her hand to the staff. The same rot she had cured in a hundred children was now inside her. Her legs shook. If it worsened, she would fall before she ever reached the beekeeper. She forced ten more steps. The field blurred. Silvery ferns leaned along the path, their fronds catching the light, and she nearly walked into them before she saw them. Her knees buckled. She caught herself on the staff. The fox stopped and stared back at her. "Sit down before you break something." An old woman knelt beside a low bank of ferns, cutting fronds with a small knife. She wore a stained apron marked with a red cross on each sleeve. She did not stop cutting. "I've watched a lot of people die from that cough. You've got the shine in your breath. Early. That's the only good thing about you right now." Wren sank onto a stone. "You're a healer." "I was a nurse. Battlefields. Now I cut ferns." The woman finally looked up. Her eyes moved over Wren the way a nurse counts wounds. "Clara. I had this sickness three winters back. Everyone in my ward died of it. I didn't." "How?" Clara held up a cut frond. Silver dust clung to the underside. "These. Boiled, breathed in. It won't cure you. It slows the shine long enough to keep you walking." She crushed a leaf and held it under Wren's nose. "Breathe. Deep." Wren breathed. The dust burned, then cooled. Her chest loosened. The next cough came weaker, dimmer. "You're going past the field," Clara said. It was not a question. "To the bees." "I have to. She remembers where the sickness began." Clara pressed a bundle of ferns into Wren's hands. Then she reached into her apron and drew out a metal disc, tarnished, ringed with painted moons. "Take this too. The old woman marks her days by the moon. Show her you understand her, and she may talk instead of turning you away." Clara closed Wren's fingers over both gifts. "The ferns buy you two days. No more. Whatever you're going to learn, learn it fast." Wren stood. Her legs held now. The shine in her breath had faded to almost nothing. "Why help me? Everyone else stayed away." "Because you're still trying to reach her," Clara said. "The ones who didn't come back stopped trying." Wren gripped the staff and the moon chart and the ferns. The far field opened ahead of her. The cough was slowed, not cured. Two days. She started walking toward the beekeeper's gate.