Luna Brightwood's Arc

Chapter 1 of 22

Luna Brightwood crouched at the edge of the black pine trail with her camera hanging heavy against her chest, and she counted the claw marks gouged into the trunk in front of her. Four deep grooves, fresh, at shoulder height. Something big had marked this path, and she needed to walk it anyway. Her travel book had seven wonders left to photograph before her publisher's deadline, and the frost-blooming lily she wanted grew three miles up this ridge. She had come to this world because the guidebook promised opposites. Sun deserts pressed against snow forests. Warm rivers ran under ice. She had spent two seasons chasing rare things through it, sleeping in a small white cabin at the base of the ridge, waking before light to catch the shots no other photographer had. The lily bloomed only once a year. A branch cracked uphill. Luna dropped flat. Between the trees she saw the animal that had made the marks: a shaggy bear-thing with a second row of horns curving back over its skull. It was pacing the trail like a guard. She lowered the camera. No photograph was worth being torn open for. She backed down the slope and sat against a stump to think. Going home meant losing the lily and the chapter. Going forward meant the horns. She was pulling her map out when a small weight landed on her knee. A purple dragon the size of a soccer ball blinked up at her. Its scales caught the light like cut stone. It sniffed her camera strap, then tugged it toward the trees, away from the trail. Luna hesitated. The dragon tugged again, harder, and chirped. Above her a pale owl dropped from a branch and glided low across the ridge, banking hard away from the bear's territory. Both animals were pointing her the same direction. She followed them. The dragon flew ahead in short bursts. The owl kept pace above the canopy. They led her along a shelf of rock that skirted the guarded trail and dropped her into a hollow she had not seen on any map. In the center of the hollow, a single lily glowed pale pink, its petals open, a thread of sweet-smelling mist curling from its throat. It was the flower she had climbed the ridge for. She had found it a day early, and without the horns. Luna set the tripod. Her hands moved fast because the mist was already making her eyelids heavy. She took the shot, then a second, then a third, and stepped back before the fragrance could pull her down. The dragon settled on her pack. The owl watched from the rim of the hollow. Luna capped the lens and looked at the two animals that had steered her here, and understood she was not photographing this world alone anymore.