Zach Brenner's Arc

Chapter 64 of 86

A year had passed since Zach nailed the last board on his cabin. He no longer stood staring at empty ground. He stood on a rise above a busy clearing, watching the village he had promised take shape. Word of cheap land had spread across the continent. Zach and Raven had sent riders to every town, offering plots by the river to anyone willing to work. People came. Now roofs rose where wild grass once grew. Raven climbed the rise to stand beside him. She carried their daughter on one hip. Her cat ears twitched at the sound of hammers below. Their son slept in a sling against her chest. The twins had been born in the spring, a girl and a boy, and Zach still felt his breath catch when he looked at them. Raven followed his gaze down the slope. "You did this," she said. "All of it." "We did," Zach said. He counted the buildings. A smithy. A mill by the water. Homes with smoke curling from their chimneys. But two lots near the crossroads still sat bare. He pointed. "Those two are ours. Every village needs a place for travelers to sleep and eat." Raven shifted the baby and studied the ground. "An inn," she said. "For the ones who come off the road tired." "An inn and a restaurant," Zach said. "I can cook. I've been cooking since I got here." He looked at his hands, still marked with old ink and new calluses. "Back home I never ran anything. Here I can build something people need." They started the next morning. Zach dug the foundation while settlers came to help, the same neighbors he had welcomed onto the land. Raven kept the twins in a basket in the shade and passed nails when her hands were free. Garrok hauled beams. Lyra tested the well water and swore it ran clean enough for a kitchen. Week by week the walls rose. Zach framed a common room, a long counter, and a row of small rooms upstairs for guests. By autumn the work was done. Zach stepped back and looked at the finished building. A wide porch faced the road. A sign hung above the door, carved by his own hand. It named the place a rest for weary travelers. That first night the common room filled. Traders who had ridden hard from the north sat at his tables. Zach carried out bowls of stew he had cooked himself. The room was warm and loud with talk. Raven moved between the tables with a baby on her hip, and people rose to greet the princess who had built her home among them. Zach watched from the kitchen door. He had crossed worlds and lost his way back. He had stopped searching. Now travelers ate his food under his roof, and the empty clearing was a village with a heart. For the first time he knew exactly where he belonged.