Aurora's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

The roundhouse thundered downhill, and the Mayor stood right in its path. Aurora ran alongside the great wheels, her joy curdling into panic. She could not steer it. The building had no reins, no brakes, nothing to grab. And the old woman in the square did not move. The Mayor was the first chaos goddess, older than Liora, older than Aurora. She had made messes before the town had a name. Now she looked tired of all of it. She lifted one wrinkled hand toward the rolling house, as if she could scold it into stopping. Aurora had watched this woman punish troublemakers for years. She was about to be crushed by the biggest trouble Aurora had ever made. "Do something!" Liora shrieked from the roof, clinging to the curved shell. Aurora dropped to her knees beside the wheels. The spiral-shelled creature rode the spokes, its octopus arms wrapped tight, its duck bill grinning. It only listened to her. She had told it to push. She could tell it something else. "Turn!" Aurora shouted. "Not stop. Turn!" The creature blinked. It slid three arms to one side of the wheel and heaved. The near wheel dragged. The far wheel kept spinning. The whole roundhouse groaned and swung, its smooth shell tilting hard. Aurora threw herself flat. The house missed the Mayor by an arm's length. It plowed past her, tore through a fence, and slammed into the side of a hill. Wood cracked. Wheels splintered. The roundhouse rocked once and stopped, half-buried in dirt. Liora tumbled off the roof into a hedge, sparkling and furious. Dust settled. The Mayor lowered her hand. She was not crushed. She turned and looked straight at Aurora, still kneeling in the mud beside the creature. "You," the Mayor said. Her voice was dry and ancient. "You woke the thing under my house." Aurora stood. Her heart pounded, but not with fear. The chaos had been hers. She had made it, and then she had bent it, and no one else had touched it. "I did," Aurora said. The Mayor studied her a long moment. Then she almost smiled. "I stopped chasing my own storms a hundred years ago. Too old for it." She stepped over broken planks toward Aurora. "But you steered that. On your first try." Liora climbed out of the hedge, glitter dripping. "She nearly killed you!" "She didn't," the Mayor said, still watching Aurora. "That's the difference." She jabbed a bony finger at the wrecked roundhouse. "You broke my house, girl. So now you'll answer to me for it. Come at dawn." She turned and walked away, leaving Aurora with a ruined building, a happy creature, and a summons. Aurora looked at her muddy hands. She had steered chaos and saved the Mayor. And she had just earned the attention of the oldest goddess in Glitterville, who now wanted something from her.