Aldric Ash's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

The blizzard shut the pass above Halfmoon Ridge before Aldric Ash could reach it, and now every hour he waited was an hour her tracks turned to smooth white. He sat in the last inn on the ridge road with his map spread across the table, one glove off, one finger pinning the frozen river bend. Three survey marks. A name written in another man's hand at the top edge of the paper. Seven years he had followed that name across the frozen wastes. Four pairs of boots. Eleven notebooks stacked in his pack, each one full of wrong camps and forks he had ruled out. The man who drew this map had meant to marry her. Aldric had trusted him once. He meant to reach her first. The owl on the back of his chair turned its head toward the door as the wind shoved snow under the sill. The innkeeper told him no one crossed the pass in weather like this, and told him again when Aldric paid for rope, hard bread, and a second lantern. Aldric stepped out into the wind. The owl lifted from his shoulder and cut sideways across the road, away from the pass, toward a black seam of pine below the ridge. He had followed her twice before and been right twice. He turned off the marked route and went down after her. An hour into the trees he found the shape of a stone arch buried to its keystone in drift, and beyond it a narrow cut in the rock the map did not show. Wind moved through the cut in a straight, warm line. He marked the opening in his twelfth notebook, tightened the strap on his pack, and stepped inside, leaving the sealed pass and the map's blank white space behind him.