Blue's Arc

Chapter 4 of 5

By morning the storm had thinned. Blue knelt in the snow and spread the world map across her knees. Raven stood over her, waiting. The ruins to the north were marked with dense human writing, line after line of it. She knew a few shapes. Not enough. Two symbols looked almost the same, but each pointed to a different ruin, miles apart. Choose wrong, and they would waste days crossing open ice. "Which way?" Raven asked. "I don't know yet," Blue said. She would not guess. A guess could lead them into the wrong valley, into more frost creatures, into nothing. She needed something that explained the writing itself. Her compass glowed faintly in her hand, its runes matching the map's. It pointed her off the known trail, toward a slope of broken scaffolding and stone buildings clinging to the mountainside. A mining village, hand-built and old. She followed the needle up a timber walkway. The settlement was not empty. Tucked below it, half-sunk in ice, stood a human building with frost-laced windows and a cracked stone face. The compass pulled her straight to its doors. She pushed them open. Inside, ice coated the walls. Shelves rose into the dark, packed with frozen books. A human library, buried and preserved. Blue's breath caught. Here was the writing, thousands of shapes, laid out in rows. She pulled a book free. The ice cracked from its cover. Inside, each symbol stood beside a small picture. A fish. A mountain. A river. It was a child's primer, made to teach the reading of these shapes. Blue sat on the frozen floor and worked fast. The two matching symbols on the map were not the same. One held a single extra stroke. She found both in the primer. One meant a place of water. The other meant a place of stone. The northern ruin on the map carried the water mark. "The left path," she said. She traced the route with her finger, sure now. "The right one leads to a ruin by a frozen lake. Ours is the other." Raven studied her face. "You're certain." "I can read it now." She tucked the primer into her pack. The cub pressed against her leg, warm and quiet. Outside, the villagers had gathered to watch the strangers. An old one, wrapped in furs, raised a hand. He led them to a shelter and rolled back a tarp. Beneath it sat a machine of dark blue metal, two skis and a wheel, its sides glowing with soft light. A human snow-vehicle, kept running through the long years. "For the far road," the old one said. "You will not reach the north ruins on foot before the next storm." Blue ran her hand along the cold metal. The map was readable. The path was chosen. And now she had the speed to cross the ice before the weather turned. She climbed on, the map safe against her chest, and faced the northern slope.