Luna's Arc

Chapter 1 of 29

Luna woke on cold pine needles, and she could not remember her own bed, her own street, or her own last hour. She sat up fast. Tall pines closed around her on every side. Her hands were dirty. Her shoes were scuffed. She did not know how she had gotten here, and that missing time scared her more than the empty woods. She stood and turned in a slow circle. No footprints. No path. No broken branches to mark where she had walked. Whoever left her here had left no trail to follow home. Luna was clever, and she knew what that meant. Without a trail, she had nothing. She could not trace her way back to whoever had brought her. So she made a rule. If the woods gave her no path, she would build one from clues. She started walking and searched the ground with every step. Ten paces on, something gold winked in the dirt. Luna knelt and dug it out. A locket, small and warm from the sun. She pried it open with her thumbnail. Inside sat a picture of a young man and a young woman, cheek to cheek, smiling. She stared at their faces. She did not remember them. But her chest ached anyway, the way you ache for something you lost before you could name it. "Mom," she whispered, testing the word. "Dad." The woods did not answer. She closed her fist around the locket. This was her first clue, and she would not let it go. She kept walking, and the trees thinned. A shed leaned in the clearing ahead. Its windows were smashed. Its roof sagged. The door hung open on one hinge. Luna climbed the rotten steps and looked inside. Dust and broken glass. A table. On the table lay a thick book, open to the middle. Luna leaned over it and her breath caught. Photographs filled the pages. Children. Rows and rows of them, small faces staring out in gray and white. A boy with a gap in his teeth. A girl with braids. Some looked scared. Some looked blank. There were hundreds. Under each picture, someone had written a date in faded ink. Luna turned the pages with shaking hands. More children. More dates. She understood, and the truth sat heavy in her stomach. She was not the first child left in these woods. She was one of many. Someone kept a record of them all. She pulled the locket from her pocket and held it beside the book. The same care. The same keeping. Whoever had written these dates had known her parents, or had known her. Luna tore the last written page from the book and folded it into her pocket beside the locket. She had no trail to follow. But now she had names, faces, and a list of the missing. She would follow those instead. She walked out of the shed and did not look back.