Lily Brightbloom's Arc

Chapter 2 of 8

By morning the sparrow was drinking water from a leaf. Lily Brightbloom watched its chest rise and fall on the moss ledge, then stepped outside the oak. The wolf was gone. The clearing was quiet in a way that made her uneasy. Somewhere past the stream, a rabbit was bleeding into the leaves, or a fawn was dragging a broken leg, and she had no way to tell any of them where to come. The hollow was hidden. That was the problem now. Outsiders walked past this tree without seeing it. Wounded creatures would do the same. She tried the obvious things first. She tied a strip of her sash to a low branch. The branch swallowed it. She scratched an arrow into the bark with a thorn. When she stepped back, the bark was smooth. The magic that hid the oak hid every mark she made on it. She sat on a root and pressed her palms to her eyes. Three seasons of failing. She would not fail this one by being clever in the wrong direction. A shadow crossed her knees. An owl landed on the root beside her, no taller than her forearm, wrapped in a green cloak stitched with faded gold. A brass disc hung at his throat. He folded his wings and looked at her with two hard yellow eyes. "You're the fairy who keeps burying things," he said. Lily flinched. "Who are you?" "Cornelius Nightfeather. I watch. I carry news." He tipped his head at the oak. "Morna said you'd need a voice. You can't be one. You're too small and you don't fly at night." "They can't find me," Lily said. "Even if I could shout." Cornelius reached under his cloak and drew out a glass bottle. Inside, a coil of green air turned slowly, threaded with tiny leaves. "Grove breeze," he said. "Uncork it near a hurt animal and it carries my scent and the smell of this hollow. They'll follow the wind back. I'll fly the woods and open one wherever I find blood." Lily took the bottle. It was warm. "Why help me?" "Because you didn't run from the wolf." He clicked his beak. "Give me the first one." She handed it back. Cornelius lifted into the branches and was gone. By dusk the wind changed. A limping hare pushed through the ferns and stopped at the base of the oak, nose working. It saw the hollow. It went inside. An hour later a jay with a torn wing dropped onto the moss beside it. Then a squirrel with a bloody flank. Lily counted four before full dark. She was still counting when she heard the fox. It sat at the edge of the clearing, red coat clean, ears forward, watching her patients arrive. It was not hunting. It was learning the way in.