Dom Thornwood's Arc

Chapter 14 of 14

The hum from the stone ring deepened, and the carved slots along its rim filled with pale blue light. The old man stepped back with the bridle pressed to his chest. His shadow lay clean and proper behind him now. Dom's own shadow stretched the wrong way, reaching toward the setting sun like a hand that did not belong to him. A ring of pale blue flowers had bloomed around the base of the stone gate while they spoke. The petals matched the woven bridle exactly. The moth-stag stepped between the flowers and lowered its great antlered head until its lantern eyes were level with Dom's. Its wide gray wings opened once, slow and soft, then settled. At Dom's boots, a shallow pool had gathered in a dip in the dirt. The water was dark and still. He looked down and saw the twisted branches of dead trees reflected there, though no such trees stood near him. The reflection showed a sky he had never walked under. The ground around the pool was cracked in thin lines, each crack pointing away from his wrong shadow like spokes. "You carry it the other way now," the old man said. His voice was steadier than before. "You go back. You wait at the tree line. You smile at a younger man who does not yet know your face." Dom nodded. He had known this for a long time without letting himself say it. The work was not crossing through. The work was becoming the thing that called him here. The moth-stag knelt. Dom set a hand on its warm white shoulder and swung up onto its back. The wings opened wide as a barn door. The old man lifted the flower bridle in farewell, then turned and walked into the lit ring, and the light closed quietly behind him. The stag rose. It did not fly through the arch. It turned and carried Dom back along the path he had come, toward the wood, toward three years ago, toward a young man who would one day stand at the tree line and look up. Dom rode steady. His shadow pointed forward into the dark, leading him home to the moment he had always been walking toward.