Flora Nightingale's Arc

Chapter 3 of 4

Flora stood by the black lake, the freed grief coiled at her feet. She reached out a hand to it. "Come with me. The Heart will take you back." The grief shrank away from her fingers. "It cast me out once," it whispered. "It will do so again. I will not follow you to be broken twice. Bring me proof the Heart still loves me. Then I will come." Flora's chest tightened. She had answered the riddle and freed the sorrow, but now it would not move. She did not know where such proof could be found. Then a light darted through the dark. A tiny fairy hovered before her, her wings glowing, her hair a soft rainbow. Her small face was pinched with worry. "You need what the forest forgot," the fairy said. "Follow the old path. Go to the ring of great trees. A wolf waits there. He holds the proof you seek." She spun in the air. "But he will not give it freely. Be careful." Flora followed the fairy through the woods. The path led to a grove of enormous trees standing in a perfect circle. Their center was bare, the dirt untouched, as if no wind had crossed it in a hundred years. There, in the middle, stood a white wolf. His fur shone, his eyes were pale blue, and his bearing was proud. But a strange shadow shifted around him, like smoke that would not settle. "You want the leaf," the wolf said. His voice was smooth and cold. Flora saw it then, held gently in his jaws: a golden leaf, its veins glowing with old light. "I have kept this memory for ages. The forest gave it to me to guard. It holds the moment the Heart loved its sorrow, before the Heart threw that sorrow away." He set the leaf on the bare ground. "I do not hand it to strangers. Tell me why the Heart deserves it back." Flora knelt. She thought of the grief growing alone in the dark. "The Heart doesn't deserve it," she said. "It failed. It buried its own pain and let this whole forest wither. But the grief still waits by a black lake, hoping to come home. It deserves to be believed. This leaf is for the grief, not the Heart." The wolf studied her a long moment. The shadow around him stilled. "You did not lie to flatter me," he said. "Take it." He stepped back from the golden leaf. Flora lifted the leaf. It was warm, and inside it she felt the Heart's old love, kept whole across the years. She carried it back to the black lake. The grief drew close and looked. Its dark form trembled. "It did love me," it breathed. "Once." Slowly, it rose and folded into her lantern's light. "I will follow you now," it said. "Take me to the Heart."