Lena Farrow's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Lena Farrow set the silvered sapling on the marble floor of the elven court and waited for someone to believe her. She had spent three years chasing a plant the elves swore had died out an age ago. Every text said it was gone. Lena thought the old archives held its records, and she meant to grow it again. The sapling in her pot was her proof that human science could do what elven memory could not. "I crossed two of your species," she said, too fast, fingers still dirt-stained. "Look at the leaves. Silver and green together. Your people said that was impossible." The court did not lean forward. A steward with a silver collar looked at her hands, then at her round ears. "You dig in soil," he said. "We do not open the archives to gardeners who guess." "It isn't a guess." Lena knelt and turned the pot. "Six months of grafting. I recorded every step. Let me show the records against yours." "The archives are sealed to outsiders," the steward said. "Your leaves are a trick of dye. This audience is finished." Heat climbed Lena's neck. She had crossed a continent for this room. Now the tall doors behind the court stayed shut, and the sealed archives she needed sat somewhere past them. She picked up her sapling and walked out before her voice could break. The courtyard held flowering bushes with small pink blooms. Lena sat on the stone edge and pressed her thumb against a three-petal flower. She had failed the only door that mattered. Without the court's trust, the records stayed locked, and her plant stayed a rumor. Then the bushes stirred, though no wind moved them. A horse stepped through the pink blooms. Pale light ran along its coat in thin lines, like writing she could almost read. It had no rider and no saddle. It walked straight to Lena and stopped, breathing warm against her hair. "I don't have a wish for you," she said. "I have a locked door." The horse turned its head toward the far wall of the courtyard, away from the sealed doors of the court. It took one step, then looked back at her. It wanted her to follow. Lena stood. She had two choices. She could leave the way she came, empty-handed, and prove the steward right. Or she could trust an animal that glowed and see where it led. She tucked the sapling under her arm and followed the horse. It walked past the courtyard wall to a low stone building half-buried in ivy. Roots glowed faintly through the cracks in its walls. The horse stopped at a small side door the court had never mentioned. The door was old. It was not sealed. And it was not the front the steward guarded. Lena set her hand on the latch. The court had shut her out. This place had let her in another way. She pushed, and the door gave.