Gram Alder's Arc

Chapter 10 of 11

The void gaped open in the dead oak. Soph stood at its edge, ready to step through. Gram stood at her side with the flame tiger pressed against his leg. He knew what came next. Soph would go in alone. He could not follow. If he left the tiger here, he might lose two months of trust in one night. "My sister went in three years ago," Soph said. She stared into the black. "She came back wrong. I have until the moon returns to find her. Then the door seals for good." "I can't come with you." Gram put his hand on the tiger's flaming shoulder. Heat rolled off her hide. "If I leave her, she runs. She won't wait at a strange door in strange woods." Soph nodded once. "I didn't ask you to." She checked the knife at her belt. "You got me here. That was the deal." Gram looked at the tiger. Her yellow eyes moved from the red seam of the door to the dark trees behind them. Her ears turned. She had smelled something in the timber. Other men, maybe. Other beasts drawn by the glow. If Gram walked away to guide Soph back out, the tiger would bolt, and this door would stand open and unwatched. He made his choice fast. He crouched and faced the tiger. He held his open palm under her chin, the way he had at her den. "Stay," he said. "Guard this tree. I'll be back before the moon." The tiger studied him. Then she stepped in front of the oak, turned, and sat. Her body faced the tree line. Her tail curled around the roots. She had taken the door as her own to hold. Gram stood. He had never asked her to stay for a thing that was not him. He did not know if she understood. But she sat, and she watched the woods, and she did not move. "She'll hold the gate," Gram told Soph. "Long as she trusts I'm coming back." Soph looked at the tiger, then at Gram. "And if you're not?" "Then she runs, and I lose her." He met her eyes. "So I'm coming back." Soph stepped into the void. The black swallowed her green sweatshirt in one breath. The red light in the oak flickered and held. Gram stood at the threshold. He could not follow her in. He could not stay to guard the door. He had to trust a wild thing to hold a place he loved while he chased a woman into the dark. He stepped through after Soph. Behind him, the flame tiger sat before the dead oak, alone in the red glow, watching the timber for whatever the light had drawn. The bond Gram had built now stood outside a door he could not see, tested by every hour he stayed gone.