Amber's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Amber crouched in the ferns and counted her eggs again. Four in the hollow under the leaning trunk. Two more buried a short run northeast, under bark strips and matted leaves she had bitten and pressed into place herself. Six. Still six. For two mornings something had walked the west edge of her ground and left tracks she could not name. Her mother had held this territory before her, and her mother's mother before that. Her mother was dead now. Amber would not say how. The eggs were what was left, and she meant to keep them alive until they cracked. She checked the false nest first. The original cup sat open to the sky, lined with old leaves and three round river stones she had carried up at dusk. From above it would look like a clutch worth taking. The real nest, the hidden one, sat ten paces off in the crook of a dead tree. Bark strips woven tight. Leaves layered until the shape vanished into the trunk. She had stood over it at three angles last night and seen nothing. That was the only test that mattered. She went west to read the tracks again. The bent ferns were fresh. The scent was thicker today, sour and warm. She followed it to a stand of old trees at the edge of her range, and there she stopped. One trunk was split open from shoulder height down to the roots. Four gouges. Each one deeper than her own foreclaw could cut. The wood inside the cuts was raw and weeping. She set her own claw into the lowest mark and it sat inside the groove with room on both sides. Not a raptor. Not a pack. One animal, alone, tall enough to reach above her head and heavy enough to drag that cut down through the heartwood. She had seen the shape once across the river when she was small. Her mother had pulled her flat into the grass and waited until the ground stopped shaking. A tyrant. The big one. The kind that did not circle ground for two days unless it had already decided the ground was worth taking. Amber backed away from the tree without turning. Her plan had been to wait, to watch, to drive off whatever small thief was testing her edges. That plan was finished. She could not fight what had made those marks. She could not outrun it carrying eggs. She ran back to the hidden nest and pressed her snout against the nearest shell. Warm. Still warm. She had two choices now and both were bad. Move the clutch again, deeper east, and hope the scent trail did not lead the tyrant straight to them. Or stay, and bet the disguised cup and the false one would be enough when it came through. She had until dark to choose.