Elizabeth Frostwyn's Arc

Chapter 4 of 4

Elijah was gone. Elizabeth stood alone under the rose lamp with a stranger's hair pinched between her fingers. The bench of pink stone still held the scratched name. She had told him she could hold the trail. Now she had to. She knelt at the last clear print by the bench and pressed her palm flat. Frost bloomed. The boot shape lifted from the moss, narrow heel, short stride. Elizabeth stood and followed. Print by print, she pulled the cold up under the woman's steps and set them in white. Then the wind changed. Warm air pushed through the trees. It came from the south, wet and heavy, wrong for the hour. Elizabeth felt it on her neck first. Then she saw the frost she had just laid begin to bead. Water ran down the bark. The print at her feet softened at the edges. A thaw. Out of nowhere. She swore and dropped to both knees. She spread her hands wide and pushed cold into the ground. Frost raced ahead of her in a thin sheet, catching three more prints before the warmth caught up and ate them. Her breath came short. Her fingers ached. She knew this trick. Fire magic did not have to be flame. A steady warmth, aimed at her work, was enough. Someone was burning the trail off behind her on purpose. Elizabeth ran. She followed the last hard print past a purple-barked tree hung with pink and white star fruit. Past a bush of chalky gray berries that popped soft under her boot. The prints thinned. Two more. One more. Then wet earth. She stopped in a small clearing. A wooden stall stood at the far edge, striped canopy sagging, the order window black and empty. It smelled of cold coffee and something older. On the picnic bench in front of it, a mug sat steaming. Elizabeth crossed to the bench. The mug was full. The steam rose straight up. No one sat there. No prints led away. Under the mug, a slip of paper. She pulled it free. Three words in the same quick hand as the name on the quartz. Too slow, witch. Elizabeth's temper broke. She slammed her palm on the bench and drove cold through the wood. Ice climbed the stall, split the canopy poles, cased the empty window in frost. The mug shattered. Steam hissed and died. It did nothing. The woman was already gone. The trail was gone. Gretel was somewhere at the other end of a road Elizabeth could no longer follow, and Elijah was running toward her blind. Elizabeth stood in the ruined frost and made herself think. The woman had waited here. She had known Elizabeth would come. That meant she had known Elijah would not. The trap was not for the child. It was for him, wherever he was going now. Elizabeth turned and ran back the way she came.