The Springborn

SABELLA

OCTOBER 4, 1886

AFTERNOON

S tuck indoors for the third day in a row, I clean until there is nothing in the two rooms that does not shine. I bake until the flour supply runs dangerously low. I eat too much bread and too many sweet cakes, and I sit by the fireplace and think of Calder.

His voice, his hazelnut-brown eyes, his unruly laughter. His steadfastness, his stubbornness, the way he looks at my antlers—as if they’re more beautiful than the moon and stars combined.

I think of his wings, green and gold, and what a pity it is that he keeps them folded flat and covered with shirts and waistcoats.

And I have an idea.

While rain pummels the windowpanes, I tear open the seams of the blue calico dress Cleona sent when Robbie and Calder dropped off provisions months ago. While showers drum wet fingers against the roof, I measure and cut the cloth carefully, loath to make a single mistake.

Night encroaches. I light two lamps and bend over my work at the kitchen table, stitching as neatly as I can. Admittedly, I have never been a good seamstress, but I have never cared as much about a garment as I do this one.

When I awaken with my head on the table next to the halfway assembled shirt, I hear only silence. The rain has ceased at last. I rise and stretch, put the kettle on for tea, and resume my sewing. Every stitch is a word of love, a memory of an embrace, a whisper of hope.