Delia Fernbrook's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

The lotus-shape trembled under the water, and Delia knew she had only moments. She could see the spirit whole at last. But she had no vessel to hold it. A binding needed a cage, and she had brought none to the shore. The petals were already thinning, edges going soft, sinking back toward nothing. She spun and looked at the island behind her. On a low rise stood a ring of old stones, moss creeping up their sides. She had walked past them for twelve years. She had never used them. Now she saw what they were: a cage already built, older than her methods, waiting. Delia ran. Her wolf rose and paced beside her, ears flat, keeping his distance from the water. She reached the stones and pressed both palms against the tallest. The moss was cold. She spoke the binding words, but changed them, aiming the spell not at the spirit but at the ring itself. She poured her will into the rock. She commanded the stones to open a mouth and swallow. The ground hummed. A line of pale light traced the earth from the stones to the lake. Delia turned. The lotus-shape below the surface began to move against its own dissolving, dragged toward the shore along the glowing line. But the spirit fought. It did not stay a flower. The water broke open. A long neck rose, sinuous and vast, ridged with fins, a serpent's head swaying at its top. The borrowed lotus had lasted just long enough for the spirit to grab a new shape from the churning water. Its body filled half the lake. Two eyes fixed on Delia. She held the stones and did not run. The light would either finish or fail. She fed it everything, the way she had once fed the river spirit and paid with a month in bed. The neck lunged. The beast's head struck the ring of stones and stopped. The moss flared white. The spell caught the spirit mid-shape and pinned it there, half serpent, half water, straining against the rock. The stones held. The huge body thinned, thinned again, and was pulled down into the ring until only a coil of dark water lay pooled between the standing stones. It moved when she moved. It watched her with the serpent's eyes. Delia sank to her knees, arms shaking. She had done it. The spirit was caught, not in a lotus but in a monster's shape, and the stones had become its prison. But the cage was made of stone. Stone could not leave the island. She had wanted a familiar that walked at her side for eternity. Instead she had a bound thing rooted to one ring of rock, and a beast far stronger than any flower now pressing against the walls she had raised.