Danica Hicks's Arc

Chapter 3 of 5

Danica followed the old woman's trail until the forest changed. Hoofbeats. Voices. She crouched behind a fallen log and listened. The castle guards had come into the trees. Steel clinked. A dog barked somewhere close. They had not waited for morning reports. They were hunting her now, and the herb-woman was walking straight toward them. Danica's heart pounded. If the guards reached the old woman first, she would point them to the clearing. They would take the pendant. They would take her claim. Three years of planning would end in a cell. She pressed her fist to the stone at her throat and thought fast. She sent the raven up. The bird climbed above the trees, its black feathers flashing red and green in the light. From that height it could see the whole search line. Danica watched it circle, then dive. It landed on her shoulder and shrieked twice toward the east. The guards were spread thin there, she understood. A gap. But the old woman had almost reached the road. Danica could not catch her in time. So she did the only thing left. She let the pendant swing free in the open and ran west, loud, snapping branches, drawing eyes to herself. "There!" A guard shouted. "The thief! West!" The whole line turned. Boots crashed after Danica instead of toward the road. She led them through a thicket of bright lilies, their petals torn under heavy feet. She ducked a low branch. A butterfly scattered from a bloom in front of her face. Behind her the dogs gained. She burst from the trees and doubled back along the gap the raven had shown her, the one place no guard stood. She dropped into a dry creek bed and lay still. The search roared past above her. Mud cooled her cheek. She did not move until the voices thinned and faded north. When she rose, her gown was torn and black with dirt. But the pendant still hung at her neck. She had led the hunt away from herself and the road both. She had her claim, and she had bought a few hours' lead. Then she climbed the bank and looked toward the castle road. It was empty. The old woman was gone. Danica stood with mud on her hands and understood what she had traded. The guards had chased her west. The herb-woman had walked free the other way, toward the village, toward the market square. By nightfall she would tell every soul in Fern Gully that a mud-streaked stranger carried the stolen stone. The raven settled on her arm. Danica wiped her face and stared down the road. "We escaped the guards," she said. "But she'll reach the village before we do." Her hand closed over the pendant. "Then we take the village first. Before she opens her mouth."