Blushfire's Arc

Chapter 2 of 8

Blushfire came home before dawn and did not sleep well. The stag had looked at him. That look had followed him back through the trees, past the gate, up the stairs, into the dark house where he kept his few things. He set the black book on the desk and lay down in his clothes. He told himself he only needed an hour. He dreamed of the ridge. In the dream, the seam was already open, and a hand was reaching through it. The hand was long. The fingers had too many joints. It did not grab him. It pointed at him, the way a hunter points at a track. He woke with his tattoos glowing under his sleeves and his blade half out of its sheath. Choji stood on the bed, hackles up, staring at the wall. It happened again the next night. And the next. Each time the hand came a little closer. Each time Choji growled at nothing. Blushfire understood what the stag had done. It had not warned him. It had marked him. He was a witness now, and the thing on the far side had learned his face. He stopped sleeping at home. He would not bring that hand under a roof with anyone he loved. He went to the tattoo studio above the lane. The woman who ran it was the one who had given him the crimson scarf. She looked up from her workbench when he came in, ink still wet on her fingers, and did not ask why he was there at that hour. She only pulled out a chair. "You haven't slept," she said. Soft. Certain. "No." "Show me." He pulled back his sleeve. The ember lines under the skin were pulsing on their own now, out of rhythm with his heart. She looked at them a long moment. Then she took his hand. "You told me the woods were quiet this month," she said. "I lied." She did not let go. "Tell me what it wants." He told her. The ridge. The seven. The stag. The line of small shapes waiting on the other side. The hand in the dream. He watched her face and waited for her to be afraid. She was not afraid. She was thinking. She reached for her needle and a bottle of black ink cut with silver. "A witness mark works both ways," she said. "If it can see you, we give it something to see." She worked over his heart for two hours. A wolf under a burning ember, the same mark as the clasp on his book. Choji lay across his feet the whole time. When she finished, the pulsing under his skin steadied. He felt the far side pull once against the new ink and slide off, like a hand off wet glass. He slept four hours on her floor. No hand came. He woke knowing two things. The mark would hold for now. And whatever was on the other side had just learned he could be answered.