Lilith Blackwood's Arc

Chapter 13 of 21

The snow fell all night, and by dawn a clear trail cut across it. Lilith stood at her door and followed the marks with her eyes. The field creatures had come again, carrying milk and grain. Their tracks pressed deep and straight, pointing from the field to her step like an arrow. Any neighbor could walk that line and find the secret at its end. Liko sat on the step beside a wet crate of milk. His yellow eyes followed the same trail. "They deliver at dawn," he said. "By noon a dozen people have passed this road. One of them looks down. One of them wonders." "I cannot ask the creatures to stop," Lilith said. "The animals would starve." "Then you do not stop the delivery," Liko said. "You erase the trail." Lilith knelt and pushed her glove through the snow. The marks were too many to smooth by hand. She would freeze before she cleared half of it. She looked toward the field, where the creatures had settled back into shapes of tree and bush and hill. She had traded healing for supplies. Now she needed one thing more. She walked out to the field's edge. The ground rose into wool. The trees thickened into manes. Lions lifted their heavy heads, tigers turned in the bushes, and the sheep pressed close at her feet. Lilith bowed to them. "Your gifts leave a road to my door," she said. "The town will follow it. I need something that hides the path behind you." The largest lion studied her. Then he lowered his muzzle to the snow and breathed. A shape formed from the frost. It sat up, shook itself, and became a white rabbit with pale blue eyes. The rabbit sniffed the air, fussy and quick, and hopped once across the fresh snow. Where it landed, the tracks vanished. The ground behind it lay smooth and untouched. "It will follow your carriers each morning," the lion said. "It leaves no trail. It clears theirs." Lilith carried the rabbit home against her chest. It squirmed, but it did not flee. She set it down where the creatures' tracks began. The rabbit hopped the length of the road, nose twitching, and smoothed every mark to blank white. When it finished, no line pointed to her door. The snow looked as if no one had crossed it at all. That night Lilith slept without listening for footsteps. At dawn the delivery came, and the little rabbit worked behind it, clearing the path before the town woke. The trail was gone. Her secret held. But the rabbit ate too. Rosalind found it in the kitchen at first light, deep in the milk crate meant for the sick. "Your snow-clearer is hungry," she called down the stair. "And it does not share." Lilith looked at the emptied crate. She had hidden the road. Now she had one more mouth, and less to feed the rest.