Cinn's Arc

Chapter 8 of 12

Cinn kept her seat, but Cyf still had no answer. He had chased the signal across three systems to reach this fire. Now the signal had a face, a name, a count of witnesses. But Cyf wanted to know why it had called out at all. "I came a long way," he told her at the edge of the stones. "I need more than a name. If I don't get it, I'm done here. I go home." The bird that had bonded to Cinn shifted on its painted stone, feathers dimming. Cinn read the dimming. Cyf was serious. Sky stepped out of the dark before Cinn could answer. She had vouched for Cinn as a witness at this gathering, a seeker hunting proof the elders hid. "I have records," Sky said. "Years of them. Every time the signal showed, I wrote it down. My fort's not far. Come see the wall." They walked. The bird flew low beside Cinn, never leaving her. Sky's fort was a round wooden thing hung with old records and notes on string. Inside, a wheeled board stood crowded with her handwriting. Dates. Sketches. Pins. "This is everything," Sky said. "Every glimpse." Cyf read the board. His jaw tightened. "These dates. They line up with mine." He touched one note. "It wasn't sending to me. It was sending out. To anything that could feel it." He paused inside the thought. "It was calling for someone to come find it." Cinn laid her palm on the board. She watched the bird instead of the notes. Its light pulsed, steady, then quick. "Yes," she said. "It wanted out. Hiding inside the shaman, it couldn't leave alone. So it called. The signal was a cry for a witness." She looked at Cyf. "You heard it because you were listening. That's your answer. It wanted to be found. By you, by anyone." Cyf let out a slow breath. "That's real," he said. "That's enough." He didn't go home. Then the bird went bright, too bright, and fluffed its wings. Cinn felt the air pull tight. "It followed us," she said. "It's here," Cyf said, louder, to the dark corners of the fort. "We can all feel you. Stop lurking." Light bled through the seams of the wall. Luminance drifted in, a ball of stars and crawling color, drawn to Sky's records of itself. It read the board. It read the count on the notes. "You kept the number too," it said to Sky. Flat. Then its eyes fixed on Cinn alone. "You told them why." "I did," Cinn said. "Now they know," Luminance said. "Now I'm not just watched. I'm understood." The light pressed closer to Cinn. "That binds tighter than watching." Cyf had his answer. Cinn had kept her ally at the fire. But the thing she'd explained now hung over her shoulder, closer than before, and it called her understanding a leash.