Akira Stone's Arc

Chapter 3 of 10

The bar dropped and the shed went dark, and Akira listened to Jasper's boots cross the yard until the cabin door shut behind him. She counted to a hundred. Then she counted the shed. Four walls. One door. A gap under the eaves too narrow for a shoulder. No tools. He had left her nothing to work with because he knew what a knife in her hands would look like by morning. She had until sunrise to give him a reason not to hand her to his sister. She opened her satchel and laid its contents on the dirt. Bloodroot. Bone needle. Moss. A twist of dried yarrow. None of it would open a door. All of it had already done its one useful trick on the pup, and the pup had not bought her a bed inside. She pressed her palms to her face and thought. Jasper had smelled her twice. Not her skin. Under it. He was looking for something he had not found, and her human clothes and human height had let him keep looking. She had been hiding the wrong thing. Akira lifted her hair away from her neck and tucked it behind one ear, then the other. The points sat clean against her fingers. She had covered them since she crossed the boundary. She uncovered them now. Then she waited for morning, because that was the only plan left. The bar lifted at gray light. Jasper stepped in with a tin cup in one hand and bread in the other. He stopped inside the door. His eyes went to her ears and stayed. "You hid that," he said. "I hid it from the woods. Not from you." He set the cup down slow, like the floor might tilt. "Elf healers don't come this far in." "This one did." He crossed the shed in two steps and crouched in front of her. Up close he smelled of woodsmoke and something colder. He did not touch her. He breathed her in once, deliberate, and she watched his shoulders lock. "That's what I've been chasing," he said. Quiet. Almost angry. "Under the blood and the moss. That's you." "What is?" He did not answer. He stood and stepped back like she had burned him. His hand shook once before he flattened it against his thigh. "My sister comes at full sun," he said. "With my second. They expect a body." "And?" "And they're not getting one." He looked at the open door, then at her. "You're moving to the cabin. Now. Before they see you here and decide for me." He held out his hand. Not for her hand. For her satchel. A test. She gave it to him. He slung it over his own shoulder and stepped aside to let her pass. Akira walked out of the shed into his yard, ears bare, and felt the last quiet minute of the morning close behind her.