Bunny's Arc

Chapter 8 of 4

Bunny started up the glacier wall. The fairy flew ahead, marking the way with its small light. The massive wound split the ice far above, wide as a river. Her boots found cracks in the frozen face. Her chest held only a thin triangle now. She climbed anyway. Behind her, snow crunched. Smearsh followed. He did not grab or strike. He only climbed below her, slow and patient, his red eyes burning up at her back. "You can't close that wound," he said. "Your fire is almost gone." Bunny kept climbing. But the triangle in her chest dimmed. Each word pressed on the empty place. The light flickered, and her grip went weak. She stopped on a narrow ledge, breathing hard. "The shining ones watched six travelers die," Smearsh said. "They'll watch you too." Her light shrank to a spark. Her hands shook on the ice. She looked up at the wound and felt the climb was too far. Smearsh's words were winning. She had to stop listening, but his voice crawled inside her. Then something moved near his lumpy body. A small shape hung from a cord around his neck. A shrunken head, brown and stitched, its mouth stretched open. Thin white smoke curled from its teeth. Bunny stared. The head was whispering too. The doubts were not Smearsh's. They came from the thing he carried. "That head feeds you the lies," she said. Smearsh's eyes flared. "It only speaks what you already fear." Bunny clung to the ice and understood. The whispers were not true because she believed them. They were a trick strung around a dead thing's neck. She did not have to carry them. She let the fear fall away like loose snow. Her chest answered. The thin triangle steadied, then burned brighter. The light pushed back against the cold. Smearsh climbed higher, reaching for her ankle. The fairy darted down past Bunny's face and shot toward the glowing wound. Light tore from the crack in a flash. A shape burst out, long and bright, made of lightning and every color at once. A drake, faceless, crackling, formed from the realm's trapped starlight. It coiled once around Bunny, warm and electric, then dove at Smearsh. Smearsh lost his grip. The shrunken head swung and squealed its whispers into empty air. The drake's light struck him, and the snowman tumbled down the glacier wall. His red eyes shrank to two dots, then vanished into the shadow below. Bunny pressed her back to the ice and breathed. The drake hovered beside her, humming with power. Its light flowed into her chest. The triangle grew full and bright, brighter than it had been since she tore it out. The doubts were gone. The tempter was gone. Above her the wound still gaped, waiting for her fire. But now she had light enough to climb, and a drake of starlight to climb with. She reached for the next crack and pulled herself up.