Elara Meadows's Arc

Chapter 2 of 7

The lanterns fanned out behind her. Elara ran from the willow toward her shack, breath tearing at her throat. The open shore hid nothing. Every step left her plain in the moonlight. Then she heard it, close to the water. Splashing. A man grunting. The wet slap of something fighting to break free. She dropped low and pushed into the bushes near the shore. Thick vines curtained a sheltered cove, dark inside and quiet. She crawled through the tangle and looked back through the leaves. The lanterns wavered, then turned away toward the noise. The cove hid her. For the first time all night, no one could see her eyes. But she could see the water. A rugged man in a fur-lined coat stood knee-deep in the shallows. He hauled at a heavy net, the cords straining against something huge below the surface. He was a trapper, she guessed, the kind who worked the harsh country alone. He shouted and pulled. The water erupted. A shape rose from the foam. Long. Dark. Fast. It struck the trapper and dragged him under. He thrashed once. Then the shallows went still. The net floated loose and empty on the tide. Elara pressed a hand over her mouth. She should run. She stayed. Something in the water turned toward the cove, and she felt it before she saw it, a pull behind her eyes, sharp and sudden, like a string drawn tight inside her skull. He came out of the water slow. A tall man, olive-skinned, black hair plastered to his neck. His movements were wrong for a man, too fluid, too silent. A scar marked his left arm. He was hurt. He held one side and dragged the leg behind him as he crawled up the sand toward her hiding place. Their eyes locked. Violet on green. The pull snapped taut and held. He stopped, and his breath caught, as if he felt the same cord wrench inside his own chest. "You," he said. One word. He did not explain it. Elara could not move. She knew she should scream for the lantern-carriers. She did not. He reached into his coat with a shaking hand and drew out a pearl. It shimmered with shifting colors, gold and rose and blue, sparks turning slow inside it. He held it out to her across the sand. "Take it." "What is it?" she whispered. "Yours." His arm trembled. He would not say more. He was too weak to say more. Elara took the pearl. It was warm. The moment her fingers closed around it, the pull behind her eyes flared bright and certain, deeper than the willow's glow, deeper than nineteen years of trying. Whatever this was, it was real, and it was tied to her now. The man's eyes fell shut. He slumped on the sand, breathing shallow, the tide creeping toward his boots. Behind her, the lanterns still hunted the empty shore. She was hidden. She was no longer alone. And the stranger dying at her feet had just handed her a piece of the magic she had chased her whole life.