Lysandra Moonwhisper's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Lysandra Moonwhisper pressed her palm to the soil and felt it go cold. Frost had crept into the valley overnight, weeks too early. She had spent all spring coaxing rare seeds into these beds, ingredients no market sold, plants she meant to grow with her own hands and no one else's. Now white crystals laced the dirt. By morning her sprouts would be dead. She knelt over the first row. Tiny green shoots had broken through only yesterday. Their leaves had already stiffened. She breathed on them, but her breath did nothing against the cold sinking down from the ridges. The two rivers below the garden steamed in the falling dark. A lantern couldn't warm a whole bed. A fire would scorch the tender stems. She counted her seedlings and counted the hours until dawn. She did not have enough of either. Then she remembered the sheet folded in her cabin chest. She ran inside and dug it out. The silk shimmered in her arms, pale and heavy, its surface stitched with runes that glowed faint blue. Warmth rose from the cloth against her skin. A traveler had traded it to her seasons ago. She had never known its use. Tonight she guessed. She carried it out and shook it open above the beds. The runes brightened as the cold touched them. She lowered the silk over the rows and pinned the edges with stones. The glow spread across the whole cloth. Beneath it, the frost on the soil began to melt into dark, wet patches. Lysandra sat beside the covered bed and waited. She did not sleep. Each hour she lifted one corner and checked. The stems stood firm. The runes held their light. When gray dawn finally reached the valley, she peeled the sheet back. The sprouts had lived. Every shoot stood green and straight, taller than the night before. The magic warmth had not only saved them. It had fed them. Curled buds she had not expected for weeks now tipped each stem. She laughed, then stopped. One bud had already opened. Inside sat a bead of silver sap, bright as mercury. She had never grown anything like it. The seed packet had promised a common healing herb. This was something else, something the runes had changed. Lysandra held the open bud in her cupped hands. She had wanted to grow her own ingredients. Now she had one no book could name, and no way to know what it would do.