Bunny's Arc

Chapter 7 of 4

The fairy lifted from the sealed crack and darted away. Bunny reached for it, but her hand closed on cold air. The small shape flew low over the dead ground, trailing light, and slipped into the dark between the ruins. That fairy carried the starlight she had torn from her own chest. If it vanished, she might never get that light back. She ran after it, boots slipping on the ice. The fairy wove through a graveyard of broken rides. It passed under a towering wheel of glacial metal. Frozen cars hung from its spokes, each shaped like a snarling face, jaws open and dripping with icicles. Bunny ducked beneath a cracked gondola and kept her eyes on the small light. It climbed toward the top of the wheel and stopped there, hovering, too high to reach. "It likes high places," said a flat voice. Bunny turned. A snowman stood near the wheel's base. Yellow stains marked his lumpy body. His eyes glowed red, deep as two tunnels, and when he looked at her she felt him search for something soft to press on. She had not met him before. She did not trust him. "Help me get it down," she said. "Climb," Smearsh said. "Or it stays up there until the cold eats it." Bunny looked at the frozen wheel. The supports were slick with ice. She started up anyway, gripping frosted bars, pulling herself past the snarling cars. Her chest burned where the light had been, but now the burn felt empty, like a hole. "You gave it everything," Smearsh said below her. "Now you're chasing a thief you made yourself." "Stop talking," she said. "You think the shining ones will take you." His voice stayed flat. "You have no light left to show them." The words found the crack in her. Her grip shook. She almost let go. Then she saw the fairy above, resting on the topmost car, its wings slow and tired. It was not fleeing. It was waiting. Bunny pulled level with it. She held out her open hand and did not grab. "I need some back," she said. "Not all of it. Just enough." The fairy watched her. Then it drifted onto her palm. Warmth spread from its wings into her hand, up her arm, into the empty place in her chest. A faint triangle of light flickered there again, thin but real. Not what she had lost. Enough to stand. She climbed down slowly. Smearsh watched her reach the ground. His red eyes dimmed, as if the crack he wanted had closed. "Small light," he said. "It's mine," Bunny answered. The fairy lifted from her hand and hovered at her shoulder. It pointed its tiny light upward, toward the massive wound splitting the glacier far above. Bunny followed its gaze. The fairy would guide her. But she would have to climb to that break, and only her fire could close it.