Elowyn's Arc

Chapter 9 of 12

The doorway home was gone. Elowyn pressed her palm to the shimmering wall, but it showed only more moonlit towers folding into the dark. Tavian checked his compass. The needle spun and would not stop. "No help there," he said. They stood at the base of the coral arches with nowhere to walk but deeper in. Somewhere ahead a low humming pulled at the air, like a hundred voices caught mid-song. They followed it. The path opened into a wide hall of hanging crystal drips, each one glowing faint lavender. Inside sat the largest creature Elowyn had ever seen. He was soft and pale, covered in thick fur, with ears that swept out and curled up at the tips. Shelves of humming records circled him. Elowyn knew him from Wonderwyld stories. This was Mallow, keeper of The Dreamery, the gentle giant who sorted every dream that drifted loose. She had never expected to find him this far past the boundary. Mallow turned slowly. His warm smile did not falter. "Two travelers," he rumbled. "You look like people who lost the way back. That's a heavy thing to carry." He patted a spot on the floor. "Sit. Rest first. Worry sorts better after sitting." "We can't rest," Elowyn said. "The doorway sealed behind us. We need another crossing home, and we don't know a single path here." Mallow nodded, as if she'd asked for tea. He lifted the glowing orb from his sash and turned it in his huge hands. "The records have been slipping," he said. "Something pulls their threads loose. The threads run toward the sunlit side. Where they go, a crossing must be." He pointed one padded finger down a corridor lined with darker crystal. "That way. But the pull grows stronger as you walk. It takes things. It nearly took a whole dream from me last night." Elowyn opened her satchel. She had almost nothing left to trade or lose. Her herbarium, her grandmother's journal, a few dried petals. "If it takes things," she said slowly, "then I have to give it something willingly. Before it chooses for me." Mallow watched her think. "That's the kindest way," he said. "Better to hand over the coat than have it pulled off your back." Elowyn walked the dark corridor. The humming rose. The pull began to tug at her sleeves, her hair, the ribbons woven through her curls. Ahead, the crystal thinned into a pale seam of sunlight. It was a crossing, faint but real. As she stepped toward it, the pull reached into her satchel and lifted her grandmother's journal into the air. She caught the edge of one page. The seam brightened, waiting. She could hold the journal or step through. Not both. Elowyn let the journal go. It vanished into the humming dark. The seam flared open, and she and Tavian crossed toward sunlight at last. But the divine symbols her grandmother left were gone now, and she carried only what she remembered of them.