Iris Caldwell's Arc

Chapter 3 of 5

Iris woke at first light. The lake lay flat below the window. She ate the last of her bread and studied the atlas one more time. The trail led past the water and up the ridge. But she still did not know what waited at the mark. Empty, the peddler had promised. She no longer trusted his promises. She could not walk half a day to find a house full of the very people she was fleeing. She needed proof before she climbed. Then she remembered the store. Two days back she had passed it, a weathered place with rough wooden siding and a sagging porch. The old man behind the counter had sold her flint and asked no questions. Backwoods folk knew the land. If anyone lived beyond the ridge, he would know. Going back cost her a morning. She walked fast and reached the store by noon. The old man sat where she had left him, cleaning a knife. He looked up but did not smile. "Forget something?" he asked. "The land past the north ridge," Iris said. She set the atlas on the counter and opened it to the mark. "Who lives there?" He glanced at the page and grunted. "Nobody lives there. Nobody dares." He set down the knife. "That's lizardfolk country, girl. Big ones. Tall as two men. Scales like armor and tails that break bone." He tapped the mark with one finger. "They keep the whole valley. No people. No houses. That's why it's empty." Iris stood very still. Empty was what she wanted. But empty for this reason was not. "Have you seen them?" she asked. "Seen the tracks. Seen a man who didn't come back." He pushed the atlas toward her. "Your peddler drew you a pretty line. He didn't draw you the teeth." She closed the book. Her hands were steady, but her plan had cracked. The mark was truly empty of neighbors. The old man had answered her question with one hard fact. No one crowded that valley. Something worse held it. "Is there another way in?" she asked. "A path they don't watch?" He shrugged. "Maybe. The high side, where the water runs down. Fewer of them up there." He returned to his knife. "But I'd turn around, if I had sense." Iris did not turn around. She had come too far, and the crowds behind her felt worse than any scale or tail. The quiet she wanted still waited past that ridge. She only had to reach it without being seen. She bought rope, dried meat, and a second flint. Then she opened the atlas on the counter and marked the high side of the valley in charcoal, where the water ran down and the great lizardfolk were fewer. Her destination was empty of neighbors, exactly as promised. Now she had to slip past its keepers alive.