Elowyn's Arc

Chapter 3 of 12

Past the gray arch, the path opened into a flower-draped grove. A twisted tree leaned over the trail, its blossoms hanging low. Elowyn stepped onto the pale stones, holding the map page in one hand. Tavian followed, his compass spinning uselessly at his chest. The route curled left, exactly as the page showed. For the first time in days, Elowyn felt close. Then a bell chimed above her. Tairo sat in the crook of the twisted tree, legs swinging, the crescent moon charm she had traded him now hanging among his others. He was the godling who collected lost things, and he had trailed them here hoping the grove held more. "You found the pretty garden," he said. "It drops things. I can feel it." "It's not lost if it's mine," Elowyn said. She pressed the page against her chest. Tairo dropped from the tree without a sound. "Everything's a little lost here," he said. He nodded at the shifting ground, the spinning compass. "Even that page. It doesn't know which way is which." Elowyn looked down. The ink lines on the page had begun to blur. The grove's strange air softened the marks, the same way it broke Tavian's needle. Soon the route would fade. Tairo watched her notice it, delighted, one small hand already reaching. She had a choice. Guard the page and lose it, or read it fast and let it go. Elowyn knelt and spread the page on a flat stone. She traced the root symbol left, past the tree, toward a gap in the blossoms. She memorized the turn. She counted the paces the map marked. Then she looked up at Tairo. "Take it," she said, and held the page out. Tairo froze. He had expected a fight. "You're giving it to me," he said slowly. "You wanted a lost thing," Elowyn said. "It's fading anyway. I already have what's on it." She tapped her own head. He took the page with both hands, turning it over, testing it for a trick. Finding none, his crooked smile faltered. "That's no fun," he muttered. But he tucked it into his sash, beside the moon charm. "Then we're even," Elowyn said. "You have your keepsake. I have my way through." Tavian let out a low laugh. "She read you better than the map," he told the godling. Tairo hopped back onto the twisted tree. "The turn you saw," he said, "there's a bloom past it. Small. Pale petals. You'll want that one." A bell rang. He was gone. Elowyn went still. Small, pale petals. The flower from her grandmother's journal. She looked at the gap in the blossoms where the route bent left. Her herbarium waited empty in her satchel, and the first true page was one turn away. She started walking, Tavian close behind, into the fading grove.