Charlie Morrison's Arc

Chapter 4 of 14

Charlie walked back through the woods with Fern on her shoulder and the taste of court water still in her mouth. One room passed. Others waiting. She had a moon to prepare, and the journal to study, and a case to build for a table full of listeners she could not see. She needed the cabin quiet. She needed to think. She had not had quiet in three nights. Something had been coming to the cabin after dark. She heard breath at the door. She found prints in the dirt below the porch swing. Twice she had woken to find the journal moved an inch on the table, its ribbon shifted. Whatever watched her knew what she was doing. If she carried tampered pages to court, she would fail before she spoke. The cabin came into view between the pines. Blue and green crystals along the roof caught the last light. The teal door glowed. On the top step, blocking her path, sat a wolf. Charlie stopped. Fern's glow flared once and steadied. The wolf was large, white along the chest, grey down the back. It did not rise. It did not growl. Its eyes were green and level and fixed on her face. She knew those eyes. She had known them at seven, when she wandered too far and a white shape walked her home along the creek. She had known them at ten, when she fell asleep in the ferns and woke with warm fur against her spine. "It was you," Charlie said. The wolf's ears twitched forward. "At the door. At the window. Every night this week." The wolf stood. It stepped down off the porch and came to her, slow, until its head was under her hand. The fur was warm. She felt the ribs move. "You were checking on me," she said. "You always did." Fern flew a small circle around the wolf's ears and landed again on Charlie's shoulder. "A guardian," Fern whispered. "Sent long ago. Your grandmother's, I think. Now yours." Charlie's shoulders dropped. The knot behind her ribs let go. Not a spy. Not a saboteur. A watcher who had been watching since she was small. She opened the teal door and stepped inside. The wolf came with her. It walked the small rooms once, nose low, then sat down beside the table where the journal lay. Its tail settled over its paws. It looked at the door. Charlie sat across from it and opened the book. For the first time in a week, she did not listen for the porch boards. She read. Outside, the woods went dark. Inside, the wolf did not move. Whatever came next would have to come through it first.