Fiona Latch's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

The woman Fiona had turned away twice was climbing the porch again, and this time she had brought a dead fox in her arms. Fiona stood inside the front hall of the lodge and watched through the small square window in the door. The woman was maybe forty, dressed for the cold, boots crusted with old snow. The fox draped over her forearms had a white coat and one dark stripe down its back. It was not bleeding. It was not stiff. Fiona could not tell if it was dead at all. The symbol on the back of Fiona's neck began to itch. It always did when someone wrong stood on the other side of the door. She had inked it herself, three years ago, the night she promised she would never let another of them in. She did not know what the symbol meant. She only knew it warmed when she needed to refuse. The owner of the lodge paid her to sit in this hall every night and decide. He had never asked her how she decided. He had never asked about the mark. Fiona opened the door six inches. Cold air pushed against her knees. "Third time," she said. "You know the answer." "I brought you a reason," the woman said. She lifted the fox. "He found it on the track past the stone arch. The one with the sled marks. He said if I showed you this, you would understand what your mark is for." She looked past Fiona into the hall, toward the stone fire ring at the center of the room. "He said the ring would tell you." Fiona's neck burned now, hot enough to hurt. She had never told anyone about the mark. Not the owner. Not the two she had turned away before. She looked at the fox's open eye, and the eye moved, and tracked her. Behind the woman, at the edge of the porch light, a second figure stepped up into view. A warden's coat. Tara Ashveil, whose name Fiona knew only because the wardens controlled the roads, and every driver who came to the lodge complained about her. Tara did not speak. She only watched, arms folded, giving the woman two minutes or ten. Fiona shut the door. She threw the bolt. Then she carried a chair to the fire ring, sat down, and pressed the back of her neck against the warm iron grate until the burn eased. The fox was a message. The warden was a clock. Someone outside knew what her mark meant, and they had sent proof to the porch to make her ask. She had spent three years refusing. Tomorrow she would have to start finding out why.