Gram Alder's Arc

Chapter 2 of 11

The beast broke first. It wheeled from the clearing and crashed downhill, a wall of orange fur streaked with living flame. Fire rippled along its back where stripes should be. Its mane trailed like burning grass in wind. Gram had thirty feet and a compass and nothing else. He knew the truth at once. If it reached the deep valley before dark, he would lose it, and three winters would end here in wet leaves. He ran after it. He did not run to catch it. No man could outrun a tiger. He ran to learn where it slept. The compass jerked in his fist, needle locked on the fleeing shape. He let the brass pull him through the trees while his boots skidded on roots and moss. The ground tilted up. Rock replaced soil. Gram climbed a bare shoulder of the mountain, lungs burning, and the flame tiger climbed ahead of him. It moved like water up the stone. He lost sight of it twice. Both times the needle held its line, steady and sure, and dragged him higher. Near the peak the trees quit altogether. Jagged gray stone broke the sky. There, in a wall of rock, opened a black cave mouth framed by broken ledges. The tiger slipped inside. Its fire glowed once in the dark, then folded away. The needle settled on that opening and stopped shaking. Gram dropped behind a boulder and pressed his back to the cold stone. His heart slammed. He had the den now. He knew where the beast returned each night. That was worth more than any chase. But he had climbed too fast and too far, and the sky above the peak had gone deep blue. Night was coming, and he stood on bare rock with no fire and no shelter. He checked his coat. The glowing flower still lay tucked inside, cool against his ribs, its blue light seeping through the cloth. He did not know yet what it could do. He knew only that a wild thing might trust a cool light in a cold dark. It was the one soft thing he carried. Gram crawled to the ledge and looked at the cave mouth. The beast breathed inside, slow and deep. He could not walk in. Not tonight. But he no longer needed the compass to find it. He needed a reason for the tiger to come out and stay. He wedged himself into a crack in the rock, out of the wind, and drew the flower into his open hand. Its glow spread across his palm. Below, in the dark den, one coal-bright eye opened and turned toward the light. It did not charge. It watched. Gram held still and held the light out. The chase was over. Now the real work began, and it would begin at this cave, at first dark, with a flower between them.