Aelara NightwingShelly's Arc

Chapter 3 of 4

Aelara stayed with the old man through the afternoon. His desk was a cluttered nest of papers, ink bottles, and small carved foxes. He spoke in pieces. A bell at dawn. A queen's name half-remembered. A gate he once walked through as a boy. She pulled out her grandmother's leather journal and tried to match his fragments to its pressed pages. Nothing lined up. His memory was like a cracked clay pot she had once seen, chunks missing, moss filling the gaps. She could hold it, but nothing she poured in would stay. "Tell me about the gate," she said. He closed his eyes. Heavy planks, he murmured. Iron hinges. A lock no child could lift. Then he stopped. He could not say where it stood, or who guarded it, or what lay beyond. Aelara set her pen down. She had come for a witness who could open the door for her claim. Instead she had found the door itself, locked, with no key in the old man's shaking hands. His story would not stand. No council would hear it. No court would bend. She closed the journal. "Thank you," she said, and meant it, and left him among his foxes and ink. Walking out, she understood the next step plainly. If the witness could not carry the proof, she would have to find the proof that carried itself. Somewhere, a record existed. She would hunt it down.