Luna's Arc

Chapter 17 of 29

Morning came gray over the pond. Luna woke the children and led them into the deep woods. Her mother's tape still rang in her head. Get them out before the harvest. But her mother never said when the harvest would come. Luna did not know if reaching the house first would save the children or trap them. She only knew that standing still meant waiting for the harvest to find them. So she moved. She walked at the front, carved pole in one hand, the map in the other. Luke stayed close at her side, dragging his tired feet. The tiny black cat trotted between them. Behind them the group stretched out in a long, silent line. Older children carried the small ones. Luna checked the map at every fork. The winding paths matched. The house was close now. The woods fought her the whole way. A fat zombie slug oozed across the trail. Luna threw rocks. It kept coming. She stepped in with the multitool and cut it apart, the way her hands remembered. Farther on, bulging gas mushrooms crowded a low path. Luna steered the line wide around them. Once she heard the clatter of the dead deer herd and froze the children in place until the sick hooves passed. Hours of this. Her legs burned. Luke stumbled and she caught his arm. "How much longer?" he whispered. Luna looked at the map, then at the trees ahead. "Close," she said. She did not tell him about the harvest. She did not tell him she might be walking them into it. She just squeezed his hand and kept them moving. Then the trees opened. In the clearing stood a house. Not a rotting shed. Not the sagging farmhouse. This house was whole. Clean wood walls. Straight roof. Glass windows with no cracks. A yellow front door. Someone had painted the trim. Someone had swept the steps. It looked cared for, lived in, waiting. The children stopped behind her and stared. Luke's mouth fell open. "Somebody lives here," he said quietly. Luna's stomach turned cold. She had reached the house first. She had beaten the harvest. But a kept house in these dead woods meant one thing. Someone tended it. Someone came here. And the same hand that swept these steps had written her name on a note weeks before she arrived, had filled a book with hundreds of children, had promised on the tape to return. She had wanted answers. Now they sat behind a yellow door. Luna pulled the children back into the tree line and knelt among them. The cat pressed to her leg. She was not too late. She was early. Whoever kept this house had not come yet. "We wait," she told the oldest kids. "We watch. Nobody goes in until I know who lives here." She gripped the multitool and stared at the swept steps. The house held her answers. It might also hold the harvest.