Jessica's Arc

Chapter 2 of 4

The valley spread wide and open before Jessica. The glowing tree rose far ahead, too far. Behind her, a horn blew. Boots pounded the grass. The guard patrol had found her trail, and the slope gave her nowhere to hide. If she kept running in the open, they would run her down before she reached the tree's edge. Her lungs burned. The three ledgers slapped her ribs with each step. She could not drop them. They were the only proof left of forty stolen lives. But her legs were failing, and the guards were gaining. Then a huge shape stood up from the brush beside her. A man rose to his full height, red hair catching the moonlight, arms thick as fence posts. He held a crude trap in one hand, a length of chain in the other. A trapper, then. He looked at her, then past her at the torches climbing the slope. "You're the one they're screaming about," Rowan said. His voice was low and flat. "The fire." Jessica stopped. She could bend when bending kept her breathing. She lowered her eyes and raised her open hands. "I didn't hurt anyone," she said. "The men in those cells are innocent. I can prove it. Please." Rowan stared at her. The torches were close now. She heard a guard shout her name. "Prove it how?" he said. She pulled one ledger from her coat and held it out. "Forty names. One seal. All arrested on market days. No victims. No witnesses." Her hands shook. "A magistrate sold them to fill the state's purse." Rowan's jaw tightened. He did not take the book. He looked at the guards, then jerked his head toward a line of boulders. "Down. Behind the rocks. Don't move." She dropped and crawled into the shadow. Rowan did not hide. He stepped into the open and dragged his chain across the grass, scuffing her tracks into his own. Then he set down his trap and crouched over it, slow and calm, like a man at work. The patrol crested the slope. A guard raised his torch. "You there! A woman. Auburn hair. Which way?" Rowan did not look up. "Woman ran that way," he said, pointing down the valley, away from the tree. "Moving fast. You'll lose her in the dark." The guards cursed and ran where he pointed. Their torches shrank and vanished. The horn faded. Jessica came out from the rocks. Her knees were still shaking. "Why?" she said. Rowan coiled his chain. "My brother was taken on a market day," he said. "Two winters back. No charge that made sense." He looked at the ledger in her hand. "If that book names him, I'll walk you to that tree myself." The patrol was gone. Jessica had escaped the open valley. But now she carried a man's hope beside her evidence, and she did not yet know if his brother's name was written in the pages.