Iris Starling's Arc

Chapter 6 of 6

Iris finished her delivery loop and circled back toward her old well, the map still warm against her ribs. She needed to climb again. The canopy routes would not map themselves. But before she reached the clearing, she crouched low in the brush and listened. A hollowed tree stood beside the path, one she had passed a hundred times without thought. Now a soft doorway had been carved into its trunk, and small windows watched the well below. Smoke threaded from a vent in the roots. In the dirt before it, heavy boot prints pressed deep beside fresh paw marks, circling outward in a slow claim. The handler lived here now. He had not just visited her well. He had moved in. Iris backed away on her heels. She would not take the well route today, or tomorrow. She turned uphill instead, toward the canopy ladder she had climbed in spring. Halfway there, she stopped. A heap of broken boulders sprawled across the slope, fresh dirt still dark beneath them. Someone had pulled the upper ridge down. Her climbing route was buried under stone. She pressed a hand to the map under her coat. Two paths gone in one morning, one watched, one crushed. She could not work this quarter of the forest anymore. Iris turned south, toward routes the handler did not yet know, and started walking. The map would grow from the other side now.