Errol Stone's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Errol Stone read her letter twice on the post office porch. Thalia's father would sell her to another man by winter unless Errol paid a price no honest trapper could raise. "How far along is the offering?" she wrote. He folded the paper and looked at the marsh. The answer was one white stag. Its pelt and antlers would clear the debt and buy her freedom in a single sale. He had seen the stag twice. White hide, golden eyes that seemed to weigh him. It moved through the reeds like it knew every snare he set. And that was the trouble. His snares were built for hares and foxes. A stag that size would hit the wire, thrash, and tear loose in seconds. He needed a rig strong enough to hold four hundred pounds of panic. Errol worked through the afternoon at his hidden boat. He cut a young marsh oak and bent it into a spring arm. He braided three lengths of wire into one thick cable. He dug a pit trigger where the deer trails crossed near the water. Then he baited the ground with cut apples and waited in the reeds until dark. The stag came at moonrise. It lowered its head to the apples. Its foreleg pressed the trigger. The oak arm snapped up. The cable cinched tight around the leg and held. The stag screamed and reared. It threw its whole weight backward. The oak groaned but did not break. The braided cable bit deep and stayed. Errol rose from the reeds, heart slamming. The rig had worked. He had it. Then the stag stopped fighting. It turned its golden eyes on him and went still. Errol froze with the rope in his hands. For a moment the animal looked less like meat and more like something that had chosen to stand there. He reached for the killing knife at his belt. A voice cut across the water. "Drop it." Errol spun. An old man stood at the tree line, filthy hands loose at his sides, a forager's satchel across his chest. Errol knew the face. Erasmus Rootwalker had hunted him for weeks, and now he stood ten feet from the greatest prize in the marsh. "That animal isn't yours to take," Erasmus said. He did not shout. He looked at the trapped stag the way a man looks at a wounded friend. "Cut it loose, poacher, and I might let you walk." Errol's fingers tightened on the knife. The stag stood caught between them, alive, worth a fortune, worth Thalia. But the man who wanted him hanged now knew exactly where his boat was hidden. "You'll have to take it," Errol said. Erasmus reached into his satchel and pulled out a small carved horn. He raised it to his lips and blew. The note carried far across the marsh. It was not a call for help. It was a call for something Errol could not see coming.