Finn Ashford's Arc

Chapter 2 of 12

Finn woke before dawn and pulled the foxling pelt across his shoulders. He had stitched it into a rough jacket overnight, with a smaller piece shaped into a cap. The fur still smelled of smoke and pond water. He ate the last of the roast meat, packed his diary and both daggers, and stepped out into the gray morning. He had one place left worth checking. Months ago he had hidden a copy of his search map and a few notes inside an old coop shed at the far edge of the woods. It was not a clever hiding spot. It was only a place no one would think to look. The walk took most of the morning. He found the shed standing where he remembered, square and brown against the snow, one door, one window, the roof cracked along the ridge. He tried the handle. The door did not move. He set his shoulder to it and pushed. Still nothing. Something heavy was wedged against it from the inside. He stepped to the window and wiped frost from the glass. The room inside was wrecked. Shelves lay snapped on the floor. Straw was kicked into corners. A barrel had been tipped against the door. Someone had been here before him, and they had searched hard. He drew the hammer from his belt and broke the window in two short strikes. He cleared the frame, climbed through, and dropped onto the boards. He stood still and listened. No breath but his own. He started with the shelves and worked outward, lifting each broken board, checking under straw, tapping the floor for hollow spots. Whoever had come through had torn the place open but missed the one thing that mattered. Finn had not hidden the map under a board. He had hidden it inside a piece of the wall itself. He crossed to the back corner where a short length of branch was nailed across two studs as a coat peg. He pulled the branch free, weighed it in his palm, and twisted the end. The wood turned. The carved case opened and a tight roll of paper slid into his hand. His map. His notes. The marked grids of every place he had already searched and crossed off. He sat on the cold floor and spread the paper across his knee. With the map he could plan the short winter days. He would not waste them retracing dead ground. He rolled the scroll, slid it inside his jacket, and looked again at the wrecked room. Someone had known to come here. Someone had known he had something worth taking. He opened his diary against his thigh and wrote one line. Someone else is looking for the relic. He closed the cover, climbed back through the broken window, and started the walk home with the map against his chest and a new question turning in his mind.