Chrissy Johnson's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Chrissy Johnson emptied her fanny pack onto a stranger's fence rail and found nothing worth trading. A cracked phone. Two mints. A photo of Justin Lane, the man she crossed an ocean of miles to reach. The moldavite crystal at her throat pulled toward the far hills like a compass. She followed that pull for three days now. But wanting Justin did not buy food, and the road ahead was long. A farmer watched her from his gate. He would not take her mints. He would not take her phone, dead and useless here. Chrissy's stomach growled. She had no coin. She had no goods. She could not buy a ride or a loaf, and every hour she stood still, the crystal tugged harder. "I can work," she said. "I'll do anything. I just need supplies to keep moving." The farmer laughed. "City hands. What can you do?" Behind him she saw the answer. Long rows of herbs stretched across his field, but weeds choked half of them. His work had outgrown him. Chrissy dropped to her knees in the dirt and started pulling. She sorted basil from thistle the way Justin once described his own garden over the phone, late at night, both of them dreaming of a shared home. Her hands moved fast. The neat rows spread behind her. The farmer stopped laughing. He brought her water. By noon she had cleared four rows. By dusk the whole garden lay clean and green in even lines. Then a white wolf stepped out of the tree shadow. Its eyes glowed the same blue as Justin's. A white raven perched on its back, watching her with matching eyes. Chrissy froze. She had seen this wolf once, in a photo Justin sent, laughing that no one believed it was real. "That's my spirit guide," he'd typed. She had thought it a joke. The crystal at her throat flared warm. Above the wolf, a ribbon of rainbow fire uncurled in the dark. It swirled in bands of green and gold and rose, throwing light across the herb rows. The farmer dropped his rake and backed away. "You brought that," he whispered. "No," Chrissy said. But she felt the truth of it in the pull of the stone. The wolf turned and trotted toward the hills, the raven riding, the flame drifting after. They stopped at the edge of the light and looked back. Waiting. The farmer pressed a full sack into her arms. Bread. Dried apples from a blossoming tree by his door. A blanket. "Take it," he said. "Take it and go with them. Please." Chrissy shouldered the sack. She had her supplies now. But the thing she'd traded for them was walking away into the dark, and it clearly meant her to follow. She glanced at Justin's photo, tucked it back, and stepped after the wolf and the flame.