Chapter 5: Burning Wood

By noon the whole village was standing at the orchard wall.

They hadn't come to help. They'd come to watch the new bride do something stupid.

Men stood with their arms folded and women with babies on their hips.

A gang of children sat on the wall.

"Cursed wood," an old man said loudly. "Touch it and it'll get in your hands."

"It's in my hands already," I said. "Look."

I held them up. Black sap to the wrists.

A few of the women stepped back.

I picked up the saw the steward had found for me in the stables. It was rusty, but it had teeth.

I climbed onto the first tree and started cutting.

It took me a long time, and my arms burned.

The dead limb finally cracked and fell with a crash.

Nobody cheered.

I slid down and cut the black wound clean back to green with my father's knife.

Then I smeared it with the clay and ash I'd mixed in the kitchen.

"There," I said. "That tree will live."

"Says you," said the old man.

The Beast came over the wall behind them.

The crowd parted for him in a hurry. He didn't seem to notice.

He picked up the fallen limb in one hand and threw it onto the pile.

"What next?" he asked me.

"The next tree."

"Right."

I climbed. I cut. He hauled.

By the fourth tree, Dulcie was sitting on the wall with the children.

By the sixth, she'd jumped down.

"You're cutting it wrong," she said.

"I'm not."

"You're wasting half your strength. Give me that."

She took the saw and went up the next trunk.

She was cutting it wrong. I didn't say anything.

By the eighth tree, she'd figured it out on her own.

"Fine," she said from the branches. "Fine. You were right. Don't look at me like that."

"I'm not looking at you like anything."

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