Elora Wilde's Arc

Chapter 1 of 9

The fox dragged itself onto Elora's doorstep with a wire biting through its hind leg. She was kneeling in the flower beds when she heard the wet scrape of fur on stone. Blood streaked the path behind it, thin and steady, the kind that meant the animal had been running for hours. She dropped her trowel and gathered the fox against her chest before it could collapse into the dirt. Elora carried it inside the vine-draped cottage she had built at the forest's edge. Two winters ago she left the village to grow a place where hunted things could hide. The bloomfield behind her house glowed faintly through the window, wildflowers she had coaxed from bare soil to feed the small creatures the trappers were thinning out of Hickoryshade. A shimmering butterfly drifted past the glass, undisturbed. The fox in her arms was not so lucky. Its ribs stuttered against her palm. She laid it on the healing counter and cut the snare loose with shears. The wire had gone deep. Muscle showed white through the fur. If she did not close the wound before dawn, the fox would bleed out or fever would take it. She worked fast. She crushed yarrow and comfrey in the mortar, mixed the paste with a clear tincture from the blue bottle, and pressed it into the gash. The fox flinched once and went still. She wrapped the leg in clean linen and held pressure until her hands ached. Then she waited, counting breaths. Twenty. Fifty. A hundred. The small chest kept rising. A knock rattled the door. She opened it with blood still on her wrists. Rowan Thornweaver stood in the yard, a runed bow slung across his back, an arrow already loose in his fingers. A fresh scar ran across his cheek. He had tracked the fox from the northern ridge, he said, and the snare belonged to a party of six men camped by the creek. They were setting more lines tonight. Elora looked past him at the trees. She had told herself for two years that a hidden grove was enough, that if she grew the right flowers and kept the right silence, the forest would sort itself. The fox on her counter said otherwise. Six men. More snares before morning. Every creature she had been quietly saving was walking toward wire she could not see. "The fox will live," she said. She wiped her hands on her apron and reached for the cloak on the hook. "Show me the camp."