Edith's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

The doubled pulse stayed in Edith's ears all morning. She hiked to her field station to think it through. The small tent and fire pit sat at her most-used site, gear stacked neat under the flap. She spread the grid map on a flat stone and pinned the corners down. She stared at the twelve red marks. She had always read them as a scatter. Today she drew a line between the outer six. The shape closed into a rough ring. Inside that ring, the inner six points formed an arrow. It pointed somewhere she had never recorded. Her hand went still. She traced the line with her finger, then again with a pencil. The arrow ended past the ridge, in a patch of forest she had walked around for three years. She picked up her binoculars, hauled her black pack onto her shoulders, and climbed to higher ground. From the ridge she lifted the lenses and followed the pencil bearing. Bare branches. More branches. Then a single tree, taller than the rest, with a dark mark cut into its trunk. A ring of pale stones circled its base. She had never seen it before. She had never written it down. Edith lowered the binoculars. Her careful map had been pointing at it the whole time. She marked a thirteenth dot on the paper and pressed it flat. Tomorrow she would walk to the tree.