Elora Wilde's Arc

Chapter 6 of 9

The fox slept on the counter. The bird of light sat on the back of the chair by the hearth, watching Elora as if it meant to keep watching her for good. Rowan washed the pestle in the basin and set it upside down to dry. The morning was quiet the way a forest is quiet when something is wrong in it. Then a scratch came at the door. Low. Frantic. A second scratch, weaker than the first. Elora opened the door. A brinwater prowler stood on the stone step, wet fur streaked with mud, one hind leg torn open to the bone. In her mouth she held a kit no bigger than Elora's hand. The mother laid the kit down at Elora's boot and did not move. Her eyes tracked Elora's face. Elora knelt and lifted the kit with both palms. The mother watched her carry it to the counter and did not follow. She only sat in the doorway, breathing hard, holding the wound off the ground. Rowan closed the door behind them without a sound. He brought the bowl of paste to the counter and set it near Elora's elbow. The kit had a snare cut across her belly, thin and clean. Elora rinsed the wound and pressed the green pulp into it and wrapped it in linen. The kit made a sound like a kettle. The mother's ears lifted. Elora set the kit on the blanket beside the fox and turned back for the mother's leg. "They know," Rowan said. "The creatures know you are going to care for them." He watched the doorway. "I am slow with hurt things. I will be useful in another way." He picked up his knife and his coat and went out. Elora worked on the mother's leg on the floor by the hearth. She counted the cuts. Fresh snares. More than one line. She thought of how many animals were bleeding out in the trees while she sat here with linen and a bowl. The bird of light hopped down from the chair to her knee. She looked at it, and then at the book on the chair, and she knew which rite she had been saving it for. Not the guide. The warden. She carried the book to the hearth and turned to the page for the bear. The offering was heavier. Three drops of blood. A bone. A name spoken aloud into the fire. She cut her thumb again and let the drops fall. She put a deer bone from her jar into the flames. She said the name on the page. The fire drew inward, then bulged outward, and the shape of a bear stood in the hearth, black and slow, big enough to fill the doorway if it wished. It looked at her. She said, "North. The men with the wire. Drive them out." The bear stepped from the hearth, crossed the room without sound, and pushed the door open with its shoulder. Outside, Rowan stood back from the path with his knife lowered and let it pass. The mother prowler lay curled by the fire beside her kit, both of them breathing. Elora closed the door. The traps were still in the woods. But something was walking toward them now that was not her.