Linny Marsh's Arc

Chapter 12 of 22

Linny stayed on her knees beside the stone until her legs went stiff. The girl was gone. The grove was empty. She had proof the place was real and proof she could not enter it alone. She needed someone who knew the rules here. She had no one to ask. She stood and turned in a slow circle. Frost-laden trees pressed close, their fine branches locked in ice, the canopy shimmering where the flat light struck it. She counted the trunks. Seven, then eight. Nothing moved. No boot prints but her own. No path but the one she had broken coming in. "Hello," she said. Her voice went nowhere. The snow ate it. She tried louder. "I know you're here. I saw you cross." Nothing answered. She waited a long count. Still nothing. She walked the ring of trees. She looked for a mark, a cut, a scrap of green cloth on a branch. The girl had worn a green dress and no shoes. A barefoot child did not live in a place like this without leaving signs. Linny found none. The snow under each tree lay smooth. She went back to the stone. She pulled out her sketchbook and a stub of charcoal. If she could not call the girl, she could leave something the girl would have to read. She drew the flat light above the stone. She drew the girl's bare foot pressing the snow. Under the pictures she wrote, in block letters: I CAN SEE IT. TEACH ME THE RULES. I WILL WAIT. She tore the page out and weighed it on the stone with a pebble. Then she made a camp. She scraped a hollow between two of the frost-laden trunks where the branches dropped low enough to block the wind. She banked snow against the outside. She unrolled her blanket. She set her paint tubes inside her coat against her ribs to keep them from freezing. She broke a strip of dried meat in half and ate one half. She sat facing the stone. The light on it did not change. It did not dim at dusk. It did not brighten. It only held. Hours passed. Her feet went numb. She stamped them and sat again. No girl came. No creature came. The grove stayed exactly as it had been the moment she arrived, as if her presence made no dent in it at all. When the cold finally forced her to move, she checked the stone. The pebble sat where she had left it. The page was gone. Linny's breath caught. Someone had taken it. Someone had come within arm's reach of her camp and she had not heard a step. She was not alone here. She was being watched. And whoever watched had chosen, for now, not to show themselves. She put her hand on her knife and settled in to wait them out.