Danica Hicks's Arc

Chapter 4 of 5

Danica stopped at the edge of the trees. The village lay just ahead, close enough to hear carts and voices. She looked down at herself. Mud caked her gown. Leaves stuck in her hair. Her face was streaked brown. One look and the people would know her for the thief the guards wanted. She needed to pass as no one. She needed a disguise before she walked a single step farther. A voice came from the gloom beside the path. "Mud on the lady, leaves in her crown. Where will she hide when they hunt her down?" Danica turned fast. A small girl crouched on a stone. Bare feet. Tangled black hair. A cloak of bark and scraps of moss. Her silver eyes caught no light at all. Danica had seen this child before, at the castle gates, trading curses to travelers who paid. The girl never spoke plain. She only rhymed. Danica's hand slid to the stone at her throat. "You again," Danica said. "You deal in hiding, don't you. I need to pass into the village unseen. Name your price." The girl tilted her head. "A thing for a thing, that's how I trade. Give me the brightest thing you've made." Danica's fingers closed over the pendant. No. Never that. Her mind raced. Then she thought of the raven on her arm, its feathers flashing red and green. She thought of the butterfly she'd scattered in the forest. Bright things. She lifted her arm and whistled low. The raven climbed. A moment later it dropped a single feather into Danica's palm, a feather that burned with every color at once. "The brightest thing I carry," Danica said, and held it out. The girl snatched the feather and pressed it to her chest. She smiled, a thin, cold thing. Then she tugged the moss cloak from her own shoulders and threw it across the mud at Danica's feet. "Bark and leaf will hide your face. No one looks at the lowest place." Danica swept the cloak around herself. The bark scraped her neck. The moss smelled of wet earth. She pulled the hood low over her brown-streaked face. Her torn gown vanished under the rags. She looked like a beggar now, like any barefoot wretch who begged at a gate. Like the girl herself. "How do I look?" Danica asked. "Like no one at all," the girl said. "And no one walks where queens would fall." She hopped off her stone and melted into the trees. Danica tucked the pendant deep beneath the bark. She stepped onto the road. A farmer passed with his cart and never glanced at her. A woman with a basket stepped around her without a word. It worked. She was no one. She walked into the village with her face hidden and her claim against her skin. Somewhere in the market, the herb-woman was already talking. Danica had bought her way in. Now she had to find the old woman before every ear in Fern Gully turned against her.