Maddie O’day's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

The doe was gone. The green was gone with her. Only the amulet on Maddie's wrist still burned, steady and bright, and whatever the doe had woken was crashing toward it through the brush. Maddie grabbed her pendant from the moss, clipped it back at her throat, and ran the other way with Tank at her heel. She ran until her lungs burned. The amulet lit the trees in a hard white circle around her. That was the problem. She was a lantern in a black wood. Every step told the thing behind her exactly where to bite. "Cover it," Tank said. "Cover it now." She skidded, dropped to her knees, and clamped her palm over the amulet. Light leaked between her fingers. It would not dim. Whatever the doe gave her, it was not hers to turn off. Behind her, brush cracked. Something huge dragged its weight through the trees the way it had dragged along her porch two nights ago. She pulled the salt jar from her bag and poured a ring around her boots. Tank pressed against her knee. The dragging stopped just past the light. She could not see it. She could hear it breathing, wet and slow, and she could smell the cottage on it — her own kitchen, her own doorframe, coming at her out of the dark. Then the wood in front of her went cold. A shape stepped between her and the sound. It was a bear, taller than she was at the shoulder, mint green and half-transparent, its edges smoking into pale ribbons. Blue eyes, no pupils. It did not look at her. It looked past her, at the thing in the brush, and it planted its feet. The breathing behind the light hitched. Backed up. The brush cracked again, moving away this time, fast, until she could not hear it at all. The bear turned its head. Its eyes found the amulet on her wrist. Found the pendant at her throat. It held her there a long moment, the way a teacher waits for a student to understand the question. Then it lowered its nose to the salt ring, breathed once across the line without breaking it, and walked off into the trees. The cold went with it. Maddie sat down in the moss. Her hands shook. Tank climbed into her lap without asking. "That wasn't the doe's," she said. "No," Tank said. "That one came for you." She looked at the amulet. It was still too bright to hide. The thing from her cottage would find the light again the second the bear was far enough away. She could not go home. The cottage was already lost. She stood up. The woods were bigger than she knew, and something in them had just chosen to stand between her and the dark. She needed to find it again before the other thing came back.