Chanterelle Sporewhisper's Arc

Chapter 3 of 7

Chanterelle stood on the fire pit stone with Aldric's question hanging between them. Four lakes. One answer. She did not have it. His sister weakened by the hour, he had told her at dawn, and every road he took wrong was a road she lost. "I need to test the water," Chanterelle said. "A drop from each. My spores will tell me which one blooms." Aldric's jaw tightened. "Four lakes. Two days' ride between the farthest two." "Then bring me the water. Not you. Something faster." She looked at the puppy on the stone beside her. Its wings flicked. Her cap tingled where its paws had rested. The vision of the sister sharpened again — a girl in a bed, petals at her throat. Chanterelle held the image and pushed past it, asking the forest for a courier. An answer arrived at the edge of the yard. A frog in striped pajamas hopped out of the ferns and blinked at her. Behind him, down the slope where the stream cut toward Moon Lake, a leaf-shaped skiff drifted into view. A caterpillar stood at its wheel, puffing a thin pipe. "You," Chanterelle called to the caterpillar. "Can you sail the four lakes by nightfall?" The caterpillar nodded once and blew a ring of smoke. Chanterelle scrambled down. She dug in her satchel and pulled out four acorn cups and a slender sheet of birchbark. She uncapped a small quill and wrote a lake name on each cup. "One dip from each. Do not mix them." She handed the cups to the frog, who tucked them under his pajama coat and hopped aboard the skiff. Aldric watched the boat push off. "And when the water comes back?" "I taste each drop. My spores show me the future in it. Only one will show your sister blooming." They waited. The wolf slept. Aldric sharpened arrows he did not need to sharpen. The sun crossed the yard. The skiff returned at dusk. The frog set the four cups on the fire pit stone in a row. Chanterelle climbed up and touched her fingertip to the first. Nothing. The second stung — a vision of the girl gray and still. She pulled back. The third gave her the same gray stillness. The fourth she almost skipped, her stem trembling. She touched it. A girl sat up in a bed. Petals opened at her collar. She breathed. "Melody Lake," Chanterelle said. "The humming one. Fill your skin from the center, where the ripples start." Aldric was already moving. He shouldered his bow and whistled the wolf up. "Three nights," he repeated. "I do not leave the room." "Go." He went. Chanterelle sat down hard on the stone. Her fingertip was black where the wrong water had touched it. The stain spread, slow, toward her palm.