Dom Thornwood's Arc

Chapter 8 of 14

The wanderer stepped back from the stag and spoke without looking at Dom. "It crosses tonight," he said. "At the old arch past the ridge. You have one chance to be ready. After that, the road closes." Dom felt the words settle in his chest. He had not been chosen, but a door had been left open a crack. He had until dark to decide if he would walk through it. He climbed to the ridge alone and found the stone arch waiting in a shallow bowl of moss. Carved moths covered its face. Pale moss glowed along the seams. The ground beneath it shone faintly, as if light leaked up from somewhere below. Dom touched the stone. It was warm. He understood this was the threshold, and that no one had built it for him. He made his shelter close by, between two leaning trunks. He strung a hammock of woven leaves and green twigs and lay in it a while, testing his own breath. He read a page from the small illustrated journal he carried, the one showing riders crossing on moth-winged backs. The pictures did not promise him a seat. They only showed that seats existed. At dusk he stepped outside and laid his signal in the grass. He set his father's brass compass at the center of a ring of pale stones, and beside it a folded page from the traveler's journal, weighted with a pen. It was not an offering. It was a sign. *I am here. I am willing. I am not hiding what I want anymore.* If the stag refused him a second time, it would refuse him in plain sight. Full dark came. The arch began to hum. The wanderer walked into the bowl with the stag at his shoulder, and the lantern eyes passed once over Dom's small circle of stones. The stag did not stop. It stepped through the arch with the wanderer on its back, and the light folded shut behind them. Dom stood alone beside his compass. The road had closed. He had been left behind.