Wren Kael's Arc

Chapter 4 of 4

Wren sat where the beekeeper pointed. Meadow crouched beside her, the girl with flowers stuck in her tangled hair. The old woman pulled her shawls tight and stared at the moon rising in the pale sky. "Ask," she said. "But I warn you. My memory is a broken jar. It leaks." "Where did the sickness start?" Wren asked. "The cough with the light." The beekeeper's eyes went cloudy. "A wet year. The bees died first. Then a child." She stopped. Her hand drifted. "No. The child came before. Or after. I can't hold it straight." Wren coughed. Red light spilled from her lips onto her knees. Her ferns were nearly spent. She had part of a day left, and the old woman's memory kept slipping through her fingers. "Grandmother needs a shape to hang it on," Meadow whispered. "She marks everything by the moon. Show her the nights." Wren remembered the scroll Clara had pressed into her hands. Clara, the old nurse, had survived this sickness herself. She had given Wren the ferns and a map of stars, saying the beekeeper trusted the sky. Wren dug the frayed celestial scroll from her pack and spread it on the porch boards. The beekeeper leaned close. Her fingers found a cluster of painted stars. Something cleared in her face. "This one. The hooked star. It was low when the first hive fell." She traced a slow arc across the scroll. "The sickness came with the water. Not the rain. The stream. It runs down from the high field where nothing grazes." "The Mystery Meadow," Meadow breathed. "Past the top wall. She never let Mama play there." "The grass grows wrong up there," the beekeeper said. "Vines that shine at night. The bees drank the water and shook and died. Then the children who waded in it. Then anyone who touched them." Her finger stopped on the scroll. "It starts in that field. It always starts there." Wren's heart pounded. A source. A real place. "How do you stop it?" The cloud came back into the beekeeper's eyes. "I don't know. I only know where. I never learned the cure." She sagged into her shawls, spent. "That's all I have. That's all that's left." It was not the cure. But it was more than any town had given her. Wren rolled the scroll and stood. Her legs shook. The high field. The wrong grass. She had a direction now. Meadow gripped her sleeve. "You'll die before you reach it. Look at you." Wren looked at the shine on her own hands. Meadow was right. She had the source, but not the time. She turned to the girl. "Then I need someone faster than me to carry the truth down. To Kira. To Clara." She pressed the scroll into Meadow's palm. "Will you come out from behind the wall?" Meadow looked at the sealed gate, then at the dying woman who knew the way. She nodded.