Artemis's Arc

Chapter 7 of 9

The blue-winged bird kept a slow pace ahead of them. Artemis followed with the key closed in his fist. The girl walked at his elbow. The butterfly rode on her wrist and did not lift off. The path narrowed and the trees thinned, and after a while the ground under his boots turned pale and hard. He stopped at the edge of it. The forest floor gave way to a wide flat of cracked earth. Deep splits ran through the crust in every direction. Some were narrow. Some were wide enough to swallow a leg. The bird flew straight out across the cracks and landed on a low stone at the far side, where a dark cave mouth opened between rough boulders. Artemis could see no lock from here. Only the cave, and the bird waiting. "It wants us to cross," the girl said. She looked at the fissures. "I can jump the small ones." Artemis opened his hand. The key sat there, pale metal, the blue butterfly bright at its head. He thought about the cave. He thought about the last cave, and how the butterfly had refused it, and how he had listened. He looked at the butterfly on the girl's wrist. It did not move. It did not warn him back. He took that as the closest thing to permission he was going to get. He stepped onto the cracked ground. It held. He picked a line between two wide splits and moved slow. The girl came behind him, light on her feet. Halfway across, a crust broke under his heel and his boot dropped six inches into a fissure. He caught himself on his hands. The girl grabbed the back of his coat. He pulled his foot free and did not look down again. They kept going. The bird waited. At the cave mouth he saw it. A cluster of pink and purple blossoms grew from a crack in the stone beside the opening. In the middle of the flowers, half hidden, was an iron plate set into the rock. A keyhole. Small. Shaped for a key with a butterfly head. Artemis knelt. He brushed the petals aside with two fingers. He fit the key into the hole. It turned. Something in the stone gave a low click, and a seam opened along the base of the cave mouth, and cool air pushed out from inside. The girl let out a breath. The butterfly lifted from her wrist and hovered near the seam, wings quick now. Artemis stayed on one knee. He had guessed right. The key belonged here. Whatever lay past the opening was what the woods had been leading him toward since the arch. He pulled the key free and stood. The bird stepped aside on its stone. Artemis looked into the dark of the cave and could not see the end of it. He did not know what waited inside. He only knew the door was open now, and behind him the cracked ground would not carry them back.