Cole's Arc

Chapter 4 of 7

The door bowed. Boulder braced it with both palms and did not speak. Cole watched the boards flex a finger's width, then hold. Whatever stood on the porch pushed once more, then went quiet. The fox kit shivered inside Cole's coat and dropped a small white flower onto the floor. Cole set his staff down. He needed to know why the stone man was helping them, and he had no way to ask that would not sound like a threat. He tried the simplest question. "Why did you break the door for us?" Boulder did not turn his head. "You were followed. The door was in the way." "That isn't an answer." "It is the answer." Veronica moved to the window and lifted one edge of the shutter. She looked, then let it fall. "Still there. Not moving." Cole knelt by his satchel and took out the journal. He had drawn the fox kit on one page and the ruined seals he had read about on another. He opened to a blank sheet and held it up so Boulder could see. "I don't know what you are. I don't know if we're safe with you. Tell me what took the hole out of your chest." Boulder looked down at him for a long moment. The orange veins in his shoulders dimmed and brightened. "Heartstone. Cut out while I slept. I felt the knife after. Not before." "By who?" "The thing on the porch. Or something like it. Came down from the mountains. Same road as you." Cole let the journal rest on his knee. The pieces fit. Boulder was not guarding them. He was hunting the thing outside, and they had walked into his ambush by accident. "You want it to try the door," Cole said. "Yes." "With us inside." "You are the reason it will try." Veronica's staff came up an inch. Cole raised one hand to hold her still. He looked at the hole in Boulder's chest, at the dull light leaking from the edges of it. A small figure stepped out from behind Boulder's leg then, no taller than Cole's hip. Gray hair, a wooden staff, stones strung at her belt. She had been standing in the corner the whole time, and Cole had not seen her. "He does not lie," the small woman said. "I am Petra. I hear what he says under the words. He wants the thief. He will let you leave first if you ask." Cole looked at Boulder. "We leave. Out the back. You take your fight." "Agreed," Boulder said. Veronica was already at the rear window, working the latch. Cole lifted the fox kit clear of his coat and passed it through. He climbed after. Behind him, Boulder stepped away from the door and let it fall open. Something came in. Cole did not look back. He ran east through the grass with Veronica ahead of him, into open country he did not know, with no cabin left to hide in.