Briar Thorne's Arc

Chapter 5 of 11

The beast was gone, but Briar knew it would come back. Warmth had drawn it once. Warmth would draw it again. The fox kit slept in the crook of her arm, its heat soaking into her sleeve. She could not thaw a single flower until she solved this. Any bloom she woke would ring like a dinner bell across the slope. She carried the kit up to the ice cave where she had first found it. Brambles crossed the frozen mouth like black stitches, red berries frozen among the thorns. Inside, the shrine glowed pale. A round moon of light hung at its center, ringed with crystal spikes. Briar knelt on the cold steps. "I woke your fire," she said. "Now a hunter wants to eat it. I can't warm the ground without calling more." The light thickened. A shape formed above the shrine, tall and thin, her long hair drifting as if underwater. The goddess of moon and ice looked down. Years alone had worn her thin, but her eyes were kind. "The cold beasts hunt by heat," the goddess said. "You cannot hide it. But you can trick it." She raised one hand. From the shadow beside the shrine, a lantern lifted into the air. Frost caked its iron frame. Inside its glass, dark violet smoke coiled and turned. The air near it went colder, and Briar's breath stung. "This burns cold," the goddess said. "It throws out a false chill, sharper than any beast can bear. Set it at the garden's edge and the hunters will turn away. They flee what is colder than themselves." Briar took the lantern. Its handle bit her palm like winter iron. The smoke inside pushed against the glass, hungry to spread. She thought of the beast sliding on her ice, unafraid. This was different. This was a cold even the cold would run from. "Why give me this?" Briar asked. "Celestine loved that garden," the goddess said. Her voice dropped. "Wake it, and you keep a piece of her alive." The light dimmed. Her shape thinned back into the shrine's glow. "Go before the season turns." Briar ran down to the garden with the lantern swinging and the kit at her heels. She set the lantern on the low wall, on the side facing the dark downslope. Its violet smoke bled into the night. The air there turned hard and biting. Frost crept across the stone away from the lantern, fleeing it. Then she set the fox kit down among the frozen planters. Its warmth spread. Ice loosened. She eased a red bloom free, then a pink one, and no shape stirred in the dark. The lantern held the edge. Briar worked through the night. Row by row, the flowers woke. For the first time, warmth and safety stood together. But the lantern's chill was spreading wider than she meant, and the blooms nearest it had begun to freeze again.