Celeste's Arc

Chapter 5 of 23

The light was going fast. Slate led Celeste under low branches, but she had stopped following. A golden beetle crawled up a leaf near her hand. Its shell caught the last sun like polished metal. Celeste bent close. The beetle dropped and skittered off through the ferns. She went after it, laughing, pushing leaves aside. Behind her, Slate called her name. She did not turn. The beetle led her to a clearing, then vanished. Celeste stopped short. A shrine stood in front of her, tangled in vines. It was carved like a dragon's face. One eye was a red stone that glowed. The other was a black hole. The air here was still and old. No birds. No wind. She heard only her own breath. Then she saw the web. It stretched between two roots, wide as a door. A spider hung at its center, yellow and black, big as her fist. Its striped legs twitched. Celeste stumbled back. Her heel caught a vine and she fell hard. She scrambled up and ran. She ran the way she thought she came. Leaves whipped her face. A vine snagged her foot and she went down again, palms in the dirt. She got up and kept running. She burst past a flat rock, the same rock where she had eaten the dragonfruit. But she turned wrong, away from the shrine, into strange trees. "Celeste!" Slate shot through the brush beside her, tail high. "You ran from a spider and left me talking to a bush." "There was a shrine," she panted. "A dragon. A red eye that glowed." "Slow down. You will run us off a cliff." His green eyes flicked ahead. "The dark is almost here, and you have no bed but the dirt." Celeste slowed. The trees thinned. Beyond them, on open sand, she saw a dark shape. Big. Round. Her heart jumped. "A ship," she breathed. "Slate, a ship!" She ran toward it, hope pulling her legs. She ran until her sides burned. When she reached it, she stopped. It was a ship, but wrecked. A hull lay on its side, half in the sand. Salt had eaten its paint. Holes gaped in the boards. No mast. No sail. No people. Celeste's shoulders dropped. Then she looked closer. The hull was hollow inside. Dry. Empty. She ducked her head through a broken plank and peered in. No windows watched her. No spider. Just dark, quiet wood. "There," Slate said, hopping in beside her. "A real shelter. No eyes in the walls." Celeste crawled out and sat on the cool sand. The sun sank low over the water. It turned the sea gold and pink and still. She was tired all through. The wreck would hold her tonight. She watched the light fade and thought of the shrine. A dragon's face, hidden deep, with one burning eye. Slate had led her past it. But tomorrow, she decided, she would go back and see.