Grunk's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

The full moon hung white over the trees. Grunk stared at it from the cave mouth. His debt to Thrum was paid, but his own time was gone. He had until this moon to find his way back into the Deepwood. He did not even know where the ancestral grove lay, the old troll ground his tribe had lost. The moon was climbing. Soon the Deepwood would seal itself and never let him in. He turned back inside. Thrum stood against the wall, legs shaking, feet freed of stone. Groof crouched by the fire, wringing water from the empty skin. Grunk knelt in the dirt and pressed his palms flat, the way he once read roots near the burrow. He felt for the Deepwood's pull. Nothing answered. He had lost it. "It closes tonight," Grunk said. "And I don't know where to go. My tribe's grove is gone from me. I never saw it. Only heard the old ones name it." Thrum watched the fire. He spoke without turning. "The grove your tribe lost. I watched it burn." Grunk froze. "You saw it?" "From the mountain. Long ago. Smoke came up through the Deepwood, north side, where three streams meet." Thrum's voice dropped, flat and final. "I told myself it was lightning. I stayed put." Groof set down the water skin. "Three streams. I know that place. Under the old bridge water, upstream. Mosswood folk called it dead ground. Nothing grows there now." Grunk stood. His heart pounded. The grove was real, and it had a place. "How far?" "Half a night's walk," Groof said. "You won't make it before the moon tops the trees." Grunk looked at the moon through the cave mouth. It had nearly cleared the branches. He could run. He could reach three streams by dawn, maybe. But not before the Deepwood sealed. He pressed his palms to the ground one last time and shut his eyes. For a breath he felt it, thin as a thread. The pull. It came from the north, from the running water. Then it snapped shut, like a root cut through. The cold left his hands. The moon cleared the trees. Grunk knelt in the dirt and did not move. The way back was closed. He would not feel the Deepwood again. But he knew now where the grove lay. Three streams, north side, dead ground where nothing grew. "It's gone," Grunk said. "The Deepwood's shut to me." He rose slowly. "But I know the grove. I know where my tribe's ground is." Thrum met his eyes. "You can't enter the Deepwood. But the grove sits at its edge. Streams run out, not in." Grunk understood. He could not reach the grove through the forest. He would reach it from outside, along the water. The dead ground was waiting. His tribe's stolen home had a place on the earth again, and a path to it that did not need the Deepwood at all.