Lyra Fernbrook's Arc

Chapter 2 of 18

Lyra stepped off the porch with her satchel against her hip. The drake hopped down beside her, favoring the wrapped leg but steady. The grove held its wrong quiet. She looked at the gash she had just closed and thought of the shape of it — too clean for a branch, too wide for a thorn. Something had cut the drake before it reached her door. Whatever did the cutting had followed the blood trail here. She went back inside and took the lyre down from its peg above the hearth. Vines wrapped its frame and small flowers opened along the wood when her fingers touched the strings. Her grandmother had used it to speak to the grove before the silence. Lyra had not played it in six years. She carried it out to the porch and sat on the top step. The drake pressed against her knee. She tuned two strings by ear, drew a breath, and played the old greeting — three low notes, one high, repeat. The grove answered wrong. Birds did not lift. Leaves did not turn. Instead a shape separated from the trunks at the tree line. It walked on four legs and stood taller at the shoulder than she did. Its coat was black and its eyes burned red. It stopped where her garden ended and lowered its head. A thin line of drake blood still marked its jaw. Lyra's hands shook on the strings. The hound took one step forward. She thought of running for the door, and knew the door would not hold it. So she played instead. She played louder, faster, the notes her grandmother had taught her for calling the grove awake. Flowers along the lyre's frame burst open. Green light ran down the strings into the porch boards, into the ivy on the stone walls, into the roots under the house. The drake lifted its head and sang a thin, bright note against her music. The hound flinched. It took a step back. Its lip curled. Then it turned and slid between the trees and was gone. The pressure in the grove eased. Somewhere deep in the trees, a voice she could not place answered her tune with two notes of its own — an acknowledgment, and a warning. Lyra lowered the lyre. Her arms ached. The drake nudged her wrist and exhaled a small breath of pollen against her skin. She had driven the hunter off her porch, and something in the grove had heard her play and chosen to reply. The bond was not mended. But it had spoken. She looked at the tree line where the black hound had stood and understood that it would come back, and that it had not been hunting the drake alone. It had been sent, the way the drake had been sent, and by something that wanted her to know the difference.