Dolly Bell's Arc

Chapter 7 of 8

Word of the performing kittens had traveled ahead. The next village welcomed them fast, too fast. A crowd pressed close before Rosie finished her first song. Dolly Bell kept to the back under her flower hood, humming into the microphone. She smiled at the coins dropping in the basket. Then she saw the woman at the front row, still and staring, not at the kittens, but at her. The woman stepped closer. Dolly knew that face. She had sung in this village once, long before the disguise. The woman's eyes narrowed at the flower hood, searching under the petals. "That voice," she said. "I know that voice." Dolly's heart slammed. If the woman named her, someone would run for the road. Someone always did. The bandits paid for word of the singing girl. One shout, and the whole camp would be reported and hunted. Rosie and Rosemary kept dancing, unaware. Dolly had seconds. She did not run. Running would prove it. Instead she stepped forward, into the light, and let the hood fall back herself. Petal dust smeared her cheeks. She lifted her chin and sang, full and clear, the way she once had for this very square. "Yes," Dolly said. "It's me. The girl the bandits hunt." Gasps ran through the crowd. "They hunt me because I sing for you. Because I won't stop." She turned to the woman. "You remember my song. So help me finish it." The woman's hard stare broke. She had wept the last time Dolly sang here. She remembered. Slowly, she began to hum along. Then another villager joined. Then twenty. The square filled with voices, all singing Dolly's tune. No one ran for the road. The crowd itself became the shield. When the song ended, the woman gripped Dolly's hands. "They can't report a whole village," she whispered. "We'll say we never saw you." The basket overflowed with coins. Dolly had a village on her side for the first time. But a shape watched from the tree line beyond the gate. A wolf man, huge, an axe across his back, a red scarf at his throat. Garrick Razorfang had come for the story of the singing kittens. He found the singing girl instead, unhooded, out in the open, exactly as the bounty described. He did not charge. He counted the crowd, then turned back toward the trees. Two more wolf men waited in the shadows there. "It's her," Garrick said. His grin showed teeth. "No mask now. We know her face, her village, her road." One bandit reached for his belt. Garrick stopped him. "Not with this many. We take her on the road, quiet." They slipped into the dark toward their hideout. Dolly's choice had saved the camp tonight. The disguise was gone for good, traded for something stronger, a village that would lie for her. She did not know that the axe had already marked her next road.