Clover Longear's Arc

Chapter 1 of 4

Clover Longear had been walking for so many days she stopped counting them. Her kin were scattered somewhere in a hidden warren after the grove's curse, and she meant to find it. But standing in the gray woods now, she had no idea which way to go. Every ridge looked the same. Her belly was empty. Guess wrong and she would starve before she found a single trail home. She pressed her ears flat, then raised them. She listened for anything true. Water. Wind. Her mother's footsteps on packed dirt, if the world would only give her that. Nothing came but her own breath and the ache in her legs. Then she heard a drum. It was faint, a slow steady beat, coming from beyond a low earthen mound. Clover followed the sound. Behind the mound she found a small old burrow, its face carved with rabbit shapes worn smooth by time. A rabbit sat at its mouth. She wore feathers and shells and a crescent moon at her chest. Pale marks glowed on her fur. Clover could see the trees through her body. A ghost. The ghost struck a hide drum with one paw. She looked at Clover the way a starving thing looks at food. "You heard it," the ghost said. "Living ears. Good." "Who are you?" Clover asked. "Tsuki. Your kin forgot my beat. A spirit fades when no one listens." She struck the drum again. "You listened. That buys you something." Clover knelt. "I'm looking for the warren. My people. I don't know the way." Tsuki's ears turned. "The beat carries the old paths. Every trail rabbits ever ran. It is in the drum." She held it out. "But I cannot walk you there. I am almost gone." Clover reached, then stopped. "Tell me plainly. What do you want." "Carry the beat," Tsuki said. "Keep it in your chest. Then it does not die with me." She did not soften it. "Refuse, and you wander until you drop." Clover thought of her mother, of clover grass in the morning, of being called by name. She had surrendered once already. She would not do it again. "Teach me," she said. Tsuki set Clover's paw on the drum skin. She beat it slow. Clover's sharp ears caught something under the sound, a pull, like a scent that had a shape. North and east. Down, toward deeper ground. The path unspooled in her head, clear as her mother's step. When she opened her eyes, Tsuki was thinner. Nearly light. "You have it now," the ghost said. "Follow the beat. It ends at your warren." Her voice dropped. "One thing. Something walks those tunnels ahead of you. It does not want to be found." Before Clover could ask more, Tsuki faded to nothing. The drum sat in the dirt, still warm. Clover picked it up. She knew the way now. She also knew she was not the only one moving toward it.