Lyra Deepseeker's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Lyra Deepseeker was three days into the Foxglove Deep when the wind turned and tried to take her notes. She had two hundred loose pages spread on a flat rock: copied map fragments, a list of three names, the symbol she had first seen in a dream and then found on three maps drawn centuries apart. The pages were her only guide to the sage at the heart of the Deep. She had memorized most of them, but not the marginalia, not the small notes she had added in the archive when something almost made sense. A gust lifted the top sheet and threw it into the brush. She lunged. She caught six pages against her chest and pinned four more under her boot. The rest scattered. Above the treeline a dark wall of cloud climbed fast, lit from underneath by yellow lightning. Thunder followed close. The first cold drops hit her wrist. She had perhaps two minutes before the rain reached her, and rain would dissolve the ink she had spent four years copying out of books no one was allowed to borrow. Lyra ran the slope, snatching paper from thornbushes and mud. She counted as she went, the way she counted everything. One hundred and eighty-three. One hundred and ninety. Two pages were gone over the ridge and she let them go. The three names she had been told the sage could not be found by were safe in her head. The symbol was safe in her head. The hand-copied route was not. She saw the cottage through the rain just as the sky opened. Stone walls, a tight roof, a chimney, a garden gone wild with mint and foxglove and something taller she did not know. No smoke. No light in the windows. She did not knock. She shouldered the door, found it unbarred, and stumbled inside as the storm broke behind her. On a shelf above the cold hearth sat a worn leather portfolio, buttoned shut, sinew ties looped neat. She took it down. It was empty. It was dry. She emptied her arms onto the table and began to sort the pages by hand, fastest sort she had ever done, the route first, then the marginalia, then the copied maps. She slid them into the portfolio and buttoned it. Rain hammered the roof. Lyra sat on the floor with the portfolio against her chest and listened for whoever owned the cottage. No one came. She unbuckled her satchel and pushed the portfolio deep inside, past where the inside should have ended. Two pages were lost on the ridge. She did not know yet which two. In the morning she would walk back up and find out, and then she would keep going, because the sage was still ahead of her, and she still meant to be the first.