Hazel Boonton's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Hazel Boonton counted seven boonie buns huddled under a thornbush, and not one of them had a warm place to sleep. She had promised them a colony. She wanted every scattered warren in Karridale's forests joined into one, safe and hidden. But promises did not keep the cold off small backs. Frost already crusted the tips of their ears. A hawk cried somewhere above the trees. The buns pressed flat against the dirt. Hazel felt her own heart hammer. She had gathered these seven over three long days, coaxing them out of hedges and ditches. Now she had nowhere to put them. One more night in the open, and the hawk or the cold would take at least one. She remembered a slope she had passed at dawn. An old warren stood cut into the earth there, rounded and clover-shaped, its round windows dark. Abandoned, she had thought. But abandoned meant empty, and empty meant shelter. "Follow me," Hazel said. "Stay low. Move when I move." She led them across open ground in short dashes. The hawk circled twice. Each time, Hazel froze, and the buns froze behind her. Her legs shook. Then the clover-cut door rose ahead, its wooden frame swollen with damp. She pushed. The door held. She threw her shoulder against it, again, and the latch gave way with a crack. Inside, the air was still and dry. Roots laced the ceiling. The burrows ran deep and branching, dug for far more than seven. Hazel's breath caught. This was not a den. This was room for a whole colony. The buns crept in behind her, sniffing the packed earth. One curled at once into a hollow near the wall. Another followed. Hazel walked the tunnels, counting chambers, and stopped at a round window near the back. Outside, in a clearing she had not seen from the front, stood something impossible. A shape lay coiled among the trees, scales catching light in bands of every color. Wings folded against its back. It was a dragon, and it was watching the warren. Hazel's stomach dropped. The buns were safe from the hawk and the cold now. She had won that. But she had led seven small lives into the front yard of a creature that could swallow them whole. The dragon lifted its head. Its eyes found the window. Found her. Hazel stepped back from the glass and pressed her paw to the door she had just broken open. She could not fix the latch. She could not run seven cold buns back into the night. They were inside now, and so was she, and the thing in the clearing had already seen them. She turned to face the tunnels full of sleeping buns. Whatever the dragon wanted, she would meet it here. This warren was theirs now. She would not give it up.