Alter Kindwood's Arc

Chapter 5 of 6

Alter climbed the ridge above the settlement and kept walking. The circlet cooled on his skull. His legs would not. Growing the fence had pulled something from the marrow. Every step felt like wading. The blue flames in his eye sockets guttered low. He needed water, or moss, or sleep, and the sun was already sliding toward the pines. If the Hollow Man came now, Alter could not lift a hand against it. He followed the sound of water. A creek bent north into stone, then dropped. He pushed through wet ferns and saw it: a tall split waterfall, two curtains parted around a hollow in the rock. Light glowed inside the gap, warm as a banked fire. He stepped through the spray. The falling water shut behind him like a door. The cave opened wider than it had looked. A shallow pool sat in the center, ringed by carved stone, gold specks drifting above the surface like slow sparks. The far wall glittered with clusters of blue crystal and small pink flowers pushing through the rock. Alter smelled green things growing where no sun reached. He knelt at the pool's rim. He did not know if he could drink it. He was too tired to care. "Not that one, love. That one's for looking." The voice came from above. A fairy hovered near the crystals, no taller than his forearm, pink wings beating slow. White hair, white dress, a face that did not flinch at his skull. She was the first living thing in weeks that had not reached for a weapon at the sight of him. "Seraphina Moonpetal," she said. "You're leaking, antler-boy. Sit before you fall in." He sat. She flew a circle around his head and clicked her tongue at the circlet. "Village iron. That's draining you too. Take it off in here." He lifted the circlet from his antlers. The room brightened at once, or he did. She landed on the pool's edge and dragged her palm across the water. The gold sparks gathered under her hand and rose in a sheet. They stretched, thinned, wove themselves into cloth. A cape of dark sky and scattered stars settled over his shoulders. It weighed nothing. Warmth ran down his spine into his hands. "Borrowed, not given," she said. "It carries what the pool holds. Enough for one fight. After that it's just pretty." Alter flexed his fingers. The blue flames in his sockets steadied and grew. He felt the wood in his bones answer again. "The thing wearing my face is at the village wall by now," he said. "Then don't sit chatting." He stood without effort. He set the silver circlet back between his antlers. He stepped out through the falling water into the last of the light. The pines below were already dark. Somewhere past them, something was testing a fence he had grown.