Iris Caldwell's Arc

Chapter 2 of 5

By noon Iris had walked past the last village mark on the map. The trail ran on through pine and rock, but the atlas showed her a problem. It drew the path clearly. It named no distances. She could not tell if the marked destination lay one hour ahead or six. The sun already leaned west. If she guessed wrong, dark would catch her in open cold. She stopped and sat on a flat stone. She traced the dotted line with her finger, counting bends. Every bend could be a mile or twenty. Guessing was worthless. She needed to know how far she could reach before nightfall, and then decide whether to push on or turn back. Then she saw it below the trail. A great house stood at the edge of a still lake. Ivy climbed its cracked walls. Its windows sat dark and shuttered, and a broken porch sagged along one side. The place looked long abandoned. But it was shelter, and it was close. Iris studied the sun, then the atlas, then the house. The math was simple now. She could not reach the far mark before dark. She could reach the house. A safe roof beat a right guess made blind. She climbed down and crossed the overgrown yard. The front door hung loose on its hinges. Inside, dust covered a wide staircase. Cold air moved through broken glass. She climbed to an upper room where a tall window faced the lake. The floor held. The walls held. From that height she saw what the map had hidden. The trail did not stop at the far mark alone. It bent past the lake and climbed a ridge behind the house. She could see the ridge from here. She could count it. The destination was close, but the atlas had bent the path to fool the eye. She opened the book on the windowsill and pressed it flat. With a stub of charcoal from the cold hearth she marked what she now saw. Beside each stretch of trail she wrote a rough number. Lake to ridge, half a day. Ridge to the mark, less. She turned the peddler's silent lines into hours she could trust. Outside the window the lake lay flat and gray. No smoke rose anywhere. No voice called. The house creaked around her, empty and quiet, and the quiet did not frighten her. It fit her like a coat. She closed the atlas. The distance problem was solved. She would sleep here tonight, dry and hidden, and reach the ridge by tomorrow's light. But as she looked at the still water, a new thought stopped her. The map had lied once already. If the peddler bent the distances, he might have bent the ending too. The mark she chased might not be empty at all.