Elaria Silverstan's Arc

Chapter 41 of 42

Elaria held both crystals in her palms through the night. By dawn they had gone dark. The warmth faded from the stone she'd pulled from the pool. No pull, no glow, no hum. She turned them against each other, pressed them tight, and felt nothing. The pair had joined, but they had fallen silent. She needed them to point the way home. Her old bearings were already slipping. The quarry was far south of any road she knew, and the red coat was closing in. "They won't wake on their own." Mateo leaned on the crane, breath rattling. He nodded at the dead bunkhouse. "Pearls did the same. A shell shuts when it's scared. You need to open it, not pry it." He coughed. "I don't know your magic. But there's an old tale here. A lake woman. The miners used to call her up when their lamps failed." Elaria searched the bunkhouse. Under a rotted bunk she found a mirror, its glass clouded as if someone had just breathed on it. The haze did not clear. She remembered the legends her own kingdom told. An ice mermaid named Glacia Frostfin, who could wake paired crystals. The stories said you spoke into a fogged glass and she came. Elaria held the mirror up and breathed her cold across it. The fog swirled. A face formed in the glass, then rose out of it. The mermaid hovered above the frozen pool, hair pale as frost, a tail of blue scales. She looked young, almost small, but her eyes were ancient ice. "You carry two halves that have met," Glacia said. "But met is not joined. I link them." She studied Elaria. "Your blood is ice, like mine. That is why you could call me. Give me the stones." Elaria hesitated. She had crossed a glacier for these. She had nearly drowned for the second. But the crystals were dead in her hands, and the merchant was almost here. She held them out. Glacia cupped both halves. She sang a low note Elaria could not understand, old and strange. Light climbed the crystals from the inside. The warmth returned, stronger now, two stones burning as one. When the mermaid lifted her hands, the pair hummed and tugged. The pull leaned south, steady and sure. Toward home. "They will not lose each other again," Glacia said. "Follow the warm pull. It will take you to your kingdom." She sank back into the glass. The fog thinned and went still. Elaria closed her fist around the joined crystals. They pointed clear now, a living compass to the dying kingdom she had left. She had her way home. Mateo coughed and looked past her, up the quarry road. A dark shape moved on the far rim. Red, with glints of gold. "That's him," he said. "And he's between you and south."