Chrome's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Chrome pressed one pink ear to the flower and heard a song that meant nothing. The petals hummed in a language older than any Chrome knew, and Chrome's tribe had left tracks through this exact clearing three days ago. If the flowers were singing about them, Chrome could not tell. Chrome was the last of the pink monkeys still awake in this valley. The others had scattered when the blooming began, drawn off by something none of them explained. Chrome had followed the freshest trail here and lost it at the wall of humming petals. The songs pressed in from every direction. One of them had to hold a name, a heading, a clue. Chrome shook the stem. The humming shifted pitch but stayed nonsense. Chrome tried mimicking the notes back. The flower closed. A small pink butterfly-drake drifted down and drank from the next bloom over. Its wings caught the light. When it lifted away, it carried a thread of the song with it, repeating the tune toward a second flower, then a third. Chrome followed at a run. The drake led Chrome to a fat mushroom with a glassy, jelly-topped crown. Dark ink pooled at its base. Chrome had seen the old ones chew this cap before council nights, when they wanted to hear what the world was saying. Chrome had never been old enough to try. Chrome tore off a strip and swallowed it. The taste was bitter and cold. For a long moment nothing happened. Then the clearing spoke. The flowers were not singing about the pink monkeys. They were singing to something else. Chrome heard grief in one bloom, a warning in another, a lullaby aimed at the sky. Chrome turned in place, straining for any word that sounded like family. A vine uncoiled from the branches above. It was a serpent made of leaves, small flowers braided along its spine, its mouth shaped in a patient smile. It watched Chrome listen. "You took the cap," the serpent said, in a voice like wind through reeds. "You will hear for one hour. Ask." Chrome's throat tightened. "My tribe. The pink ones. Where did the flowers send them?" The serpent tilted its head and listened with Chrome. Above them, a luminous jellyfish drifted through the canopy, its tendrils brushing the topmost blooms and setting them ringing. "The song does not speak of your tribe," the serpent said. "It speaks of what took them. The flowers are warning each other. Something is moving north through the bloom, and it is collecting your people as it goes." Chrome sat down hard in the moss. The jelly-cap was already fading on Chrome's tongue. The humming thinned back into noise. "Stay with me," Chrome said to the serpent. "I can't hear without you." The serpent coiled once around Chrome's shoulder and settled. "Then we go north," it said. "Quickly."