Elmira Ashwood's Arc

Chapter 4 of 5

Elmira moved through the trees with the spear tight in her fist. She kept low and listened. The woods opened ahead to a creek choked with a fallen oak, its trunk bridging the water like a sleeping animal. She crouched in the brush and waited. Watching was deferred debt. She could afford it a little longer. A boy climbed onto the log from the far side. He was thin, scraped, empty-handed. He sat down on the trunk and pulled something from inside his shirt. A brass ring, green stone catching light. He turned it in his fingers and pressed it to his mouth. Someone's mother. Someone's promise. Elmira's stomach turned over. She lifted the spear to her shoulder. Distance. Terrain. The shot was clean. Her arm would not move. She drew back again. Her grip tightened until the green wood shaft creaked and split along its grain, a thin crack opening under her thumb. The boy looked up. His eyes found her. He did not run. He just closed his hand around the ring. Elmira lowered the broken spear and stumbled back into the brush. No cannon sounded. He had seen her face. He had seen her freeze. She ran until her lungs burned, and the one thing she could not fake was already showing — every breath ragged, every step heavier. She had kept her life and given away her secret. Someone in the woods now knew exactly what she was.