Lyra Fernbrook's Arc

Chapter 3 of 18

By morning the two notes from the grove still hung in Lyra's head. She could hum them, but she could not read them. One rose, one fell. A warning, she was sure, but a warning of what — another hound, a bigger hunter, or her own playing — she could not tell. She sat on the porch with the lyre across her knees and the drake curled at her feet. She played the two notes back into the trees and waited. Nothing answered. Guessing wrong could bring worse than a hound to her door. She needed someone who remembered the old speech of the grove. Her grandmother was six years gone. The nearest place old songs still lived was the tavern at the edge of the village, where the bards kept the long ballads. Lyra wrapped the lyre in cloth, shouldered her herb satchel, and set out along the path. The drake padded after her, wings folded tight, flowers along its spine shedding pollen with each step. The tavern sat under carved eaves and hanging lanterns, banners drooping in the still air. Inside smelled of bread and pine smoke. Lyra took a corner bench and unwrapped the lyre on the table. She plucked the two notes for the old woman who tended the bar, then for a traveling harper by the fire. Both shook their heads. The harper said the interval was elven but older than any tune he knew. He told her to ask the small folk. They kept what the singers forgot. Lyra carried the lyre outside to the herb garden behind the tavern and played the two notes again, softly. A speck of light lifted from the mint. It came closer and became a sprite no taller than her hand, wings like wet glass, a green leaf at her waist. The sprite listened with her head tilted. Then her face went tight. She spoke fast, in a voice like a struck bell. The notes were a name, she said. The grove had named the thing that sent the hound. It was calling the thing out, and warning Lyra to stand clear when it answered. The hound had been a scout. What came next would come for the caller — and the grove had marked Lyra as the caller the moment she played her grandmother's tune. Lyra set the lyre on the bench. Her hands were steady now. She had wanted the grove to speak to her, and it had. The warning was not a riddle anymore. Something worse than the hound was on its way to her house, and it was coming because the grove had pointed at her. She thanked the sprite, lifted the drake to her shoulder, and started back down the path at a run. She had until nightfall, maybe less, to be ready.