Aldric Thornwood's Arc

Chapter 10 of 10

Aldric arrived at the stone deer statue an hour before sunset. He wanted the position advantage this time. The statue stood in a clearing surrounded by tall grass, visible from three directions. He chose a spot behind an oak tree twenty feet back, where he could watch without being seen. The air was still. No birds called. No insects moved through the grass. The silence pressed against his ears the way it always did before something disappeared. He'd spent forty years learning to recognize that quiet. But the muddy footprints around the statue told him someone had been here for days. The prints circled the base of the deer, deep and deliberate. Behind the statue, a moss-covered stone sat where no stone had been before. Someone had moved it into position. Thomas Thornwood had arrived early and stayed, waiting for this moment just as Aldric had. The realization settled cold in Aldric's chest. His uncle had known he would come. Had planned for it. Had probably been watching him watch the clearing right now. "You brought the scroll." The voice came from behind the oak tree, not in front of it. Aldric turned slowly. Thomas Thornwood stood three feet away, an old man with Aldric's father's eyes and calloused hands that matched his own. He wore mud-stained boots and carried nothing. "I knew you would," Thomas said. "My brother carried it the night he died. I watched them take him. Watched them bury him in a field that's been searched a dozen times since." Aldric pulled the scroll from his coat. His father's name was there, third from the bottom. "You let him die," Aldric said. Thomas nodded once. "I let forty-three people die. Your father wanted to stop it. I told him the cycle was bigger than both of us. He didn't listen." Aldric unrolled the scroll fully. Every name on it had a date beside it. Disappearances spanning a hundred and twenty years, not forty. Three generations of Thornwoods had tracked it, and three had died trying to stop it. "You killed him," Aldric said. Thomas shook his head. "The cycle killed him. Just like it'll kill you if you don't walk away." Aldric looked at the old man, at the moss-covered stone, at the clearing where the animals had gone silent again. He thought of the three victims from his fifteen years of denial. The shepherd's dog. The crow on his shoulder. The boot with no name. "I'm not walking away," he said. Thomas studied him for a long moment, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a pocket watch identical to the one Aldric carried. "Then you'll need this," he said. "It points to the next site. Always has. Your father refused to use it. Said tracking them made him complicit." He held it out. "The cycle completes in three days. You can save one person, maybe two. Or you can try to stop it and lose everyone, just like he did." Aldric took the watch. It was heavier than his father's, the metal worn smooth from decades of hands. He opened it and saw the needle inside pointing northwest, toward the watering hole. The same direction his father's watch had shown. "Who's taking them?" he asked. Thomas looked at the stone deer statue. "No one you can arrest. No one you can prove. The disappearances are the proof. Forty years, and you've got a boot and a scroll. That's all anyone's ever had." He turned to leave, his footprints already fading into the damp grass. "Your father thought justice meant stopping it," Thomas called back. "I learned justice means remembering their names." Aldric stood alone in the clearing, the scroll in one hand and the watch in the other. The needle pointed northwest. Three days until the cycle completed. He thought of his father's name on the scroll, of the woman at the watering hole, of the clerk who'd vanished into fog. Forty years of pursuit, and the only thing he'd proven was that some disappearances were designed to stay unsolved. He closed the watch and slipped it into his pocket beside his father's. Then he walked northwest, toward the watering hole, knowing he'd spend the next three days watching animals go quiet and trying to save people who were already gone. His father had wanted to stop the cycle. Aldric would settle for bearing witness to it, one name at a time, until his own was