Aela Darkwood's Arc

Chapter 2 of 13

Aela ran until the trees thinned and a dirt track opened before her. Dawn was gray. Her lungs burned. She had six days until the full moon, a book full of half-answers, and no one alive who could read the rest. She needed someone who knew curses. Without that, the moon would rise and set and she would still be this in-between thing, slow and hunted. The track bent past a shop built of wood and stone. Bundled herbs hung in the window. Small bottles stood in rows behind the counter. A well sat beside the wall. A fruit stand leaned against one side. Aela smelled dried root and something bitter under it. A shop that stocked herbs and potions might stock a person who understood them. She pulled her sleeves over her scars and stepped inside. A tall woman stood behind the counter, sorting dried leaves into paper twists. Blond hair, tied back. A pale scar cut through her right eyebrow. She looked up, took in the ears and the tail in one glance, and kept sorting. "Shut the door," the woman said. "You're letting the flies in." Aela shut it. She set her book on the counter and opened it to the page with the moon dates. Her hand shook again. She pressed it flat. "I need help," Aela said. "I'm cursed. Stuck like this. Six days until full moon. I don't know what happens then and I don't have anyone who can tell me." The woman set down the leaves. She turned the book toward herself and read. Her finger moved across Aela's notes about the candleglow bushes, about the bones aching. She did not look at the scars on Aela's forearms where the sleeve had ridden up. She did not look away either. She just read. "You wrote this yourself?" she asked. "Yes." The woman turned her left hand over. A dark tattoo curled across her palm, lines coiled inward like water going down a drain. "I know curses," she said. "Not all of them. Yours I'd have to see under moonlight to be sure." She closed the book and slid it back. "My name is Lyra Mason. There's a diner two doors down with stone walls and lanterns. Eat something. Come back at dusk. Bring the book and every plant you've written down." Aela's throat tightened. "There's a man tracking me. He paid an innkeeper to give me up last night." Lyra's hand closed over the tattoo. "Then don't sit by the window." She reached under the counter and pushed a small tin across the wood. A first aid kit. "For the arms. Dusk. Don't be late." Aela took the tin. She walked to the diner with lanterns burning beside the door and sat at the back table, out of sight of the road. For the first time in three nights, someone knew what she was and had told her to come back.