Danica Hicks's Arc

Chapter 2 of 5

By morning Danica had put a long stretch of forest between herself and the castle bells. She stopped at a clearing to catch her breath. The obsidian pendant hung heavy at her neck, its dark bands waking green and gold in the light. She held the proof of a queen. She still had no crown, no throne, no one who would bow. A rainbow butterfly drifted past her face and settled on a tall flower. Danica watched it and thought. The pendant meant nothing if no one saw her wear it. Fern Gully would never kneel to a stranger who crept from the trees. She needed someone the village trusted to stand beside her and name her queen. Without a voice to vouch for her, the stone was only a rock on a chain. At the edge of the clearing she found a woman gathering herbs. The woman wore a gray shawl and moved slow, her knuckles swollen. Danica had seen her before, at the castle gate, pressing bread into a guard's hand. This was the queen's own herb-woman, old enough to have served three rulers. "You know this castle," Danica said. She lifted the pendant into the light. "You know what this is." The old woman went still. Her eyes moved from the stone to Danica's face and back. "I know that stone," she said. "I hung it round the last queen's neck myself, the day she took the throne." "Then you can hang it round mine." Danica stepped closer. "Stand with me in the village. Tell them the pendant chose me. They will listen to you." The woman wiped her hands on her shawl. She did not reach for the stone. "The pendant does not choose," she said. "It only proves. A thief with the proof is still a thief." "No one has to know how I came by it." "I would know." The old woman's voice stayed soft. "I served the queen you robbed. I will not call a stranger my sovereign for a bird's trick." She turned and walked back toward the castle road. Danica's raven dropped from a branch and landed hard on her shoulder. She did not stop the old woman. She could not force a willing voice, and a forced one would betray her at the first chance. The herb-woman had seen her face. She had seen the stolen pendant. Within a day the castle would know exactly who took it and which way she had run. Danica closed her fist around the obsidian. The theft was no longer a mystery to her enemy. She had a name now, a face, a direction behind her. "We can't hide and we can't buy a voice," she told the raven. "So we take one." She turned toward the castle road the old woman had walked. If no one in Fern Gully would vouch for her freely, she would find the one person whose word no one could refuse, and make that person speak.