Aurora Meadows's Arc

Chapter 3 of 5

They ran the path back through the pines. Aurora cradled the pot against her chest. The little plant pulsed with a soft green light, its leaves opening wider with each step. The stranger kept pace beside her, one hand pressed to his ribs. Hooves struck stone somewhere behind them, closer now. The hippogriff lay where they had left her, breathing shallow in the wildflowers near the log. Aurora knelt and pressed a glowing leaf to the dark wound. The bloom sighed open. Golden light spread across the hippogriff's flank, and the darkened edges began to fade. A branch snapped beyond the trees. Aurora's head snapped up. She had no weapon. She had only what her grandmother had taught her. She pressed both palms to the ground and whispered the old words for hiding small things from large eyes. Warm air rippled out from her hands. The hippogriff, the stranger, and the pot blurred. Straw bloomed over them in long golden strands, heaped and ordinary, smelling of dust and summer barns. Aurora knelt beside the pile with empty hands just as a rider broke from the trees. He sat tall on a pale horse strung with summer flowers, his tunic bright orange against the green. His eyes swept the clearing. "You there. Have you seen a red-haired man, wounded?" Aurora wiped her hands on her apron and shook her head. "Only foxes today, sir. And I've straw to move before dark." She kept her voice flat, tired, the voice of a woman with chores. He studied her a long moment. Then he turned his horse and rode north along the ridge. Aurora waited until the hoofbeats faded. She let the spell drop. The straw thinned to nothing, and the hippogriff lifted her head, eyes clear for the first time in two days. The stranger exhaled. But Aurora's hands were shaking, and she knew the rider would circle back. She had bought them an hour. Maybe two.