Charlie Morrison's Arc

Chapter 9 of 14

Charlie could not sleep. She sat on the porch swing with a wool blanket over her knees and her court papers in her lap. The tracker was somewhere in the trees. Her guardian, the grey and white wolf her grandmother had left her, lay across the top step with his chin on his paws. His green eyes were half open. The cabin behind her held the cedar chest, and the chest held the blessed basket. In six hours she had to leave for town. The crystals along the eaves caught the moonlight and threw small blue shapes onto the boards. Charlie watched the tree line. Something moved out there. Not close, not yet. A branch cracked to the east. Another cracked to the west. Whatever had been testing her porch each night was circling now, bolder, closer than before. The wolf lifted his head. He did not growl. He looked past the rail into the ferns and gave a small nod, once. The ferns parted. Four bobcats stepped into the clearing in a loose line. Their coats were spotted brown and grey, their ears tipped black. They stopped at the base of the steps and looked up at the wolf. He nodded a second time. The bobcats split without a sound. Two went left around the cabin. Two went right. Charlie stood up. She heard their paws pass along the side wall, under the window, around the back. Then the sounds stopped. They had taken positions. Something heavy shifted in the trees behind the woodpile. A shape broke from cover and ran. A bobcat screamed. Another answered from the far side. Charlie heard branches snap, a body hit the ground, a low choked sound cut short. Then quiet. Her wolf stood. He walked down the steps into the yard. Charlie followed with the blanket still around her shoulders. The tracker came out of the dark from the north, his grey coat wet at the shoulder. He carried something in his jaws and dropped it at Charlie's feet. It was a small cloth pouch. Charlie knelt and opened it. Inside were a lock pick, a strip of dried meat, and a folded scrap of paper with a rough drawing of her cabin, an arrow pointing to the cedar chest, and a mark she did not recognize. "Someone paid them," she said. The tracker huffed once through his nose. Her guardian pressed his shoulder against her hip. Charlie folded the paper and put it in her pocket with her court papers. The intruder would not reach the basket now. But someone in the woods had drawn that map, and that someone knew where she kept the gift meant for the fae table. She looked at the mark again in the porch light. She did not know it. Someone at court might.