Maerin Thornwick's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Maerin Thornwick had missed the god twice this winter, and she could not afford a third. She knelt in the petrified woods at dawn, scraping gray lichen from a stone trunk into her satchel. The lichen would sell for two coppers in town, enough to keep her tincture stall open another week. But she had not come for lichen. She had come because three winters ago, in this same stand of trees, a god named the Last Keeper of Roots had waited for her and pressed a stone root into her palm. He had not spoken. He had only looked at her as if he already knew her name. She had returned eleven times since. She had seen him on four of those visits. The other seven, she had walked home with cold hands and the suspicion that he had stirred while she was selling salves to the miller's wife. The grove she used as her hiding place stood at the edge of the dead wood, six old oaks grown together over a low stone step. The oaks were still alive, which was why she trusted them. She had cleared the hollow between their trunks and stacked dry moss for a bed. She could sleep here a night, maybe two, before her absence drew questions in town. Today she meant to stay until she had an answer. She opened her grandmother's record book on her knee. Three pages of careful script on the Last Keeper of Roots, then nothing. Her grandmother had stopped writing mid-entry. Maerin did not know why. She only knew that the god was fading, that the land was dying with him, and that she had been chosen for something her grandmother had not finished. A small light moved in the brush. Then another. Six tiny winged figures drifted out from between the petrified trunks and circled her satchel, drawn to the lichen. Maerin held still. She had seen them once before, far off, never this close. One settled on the open page of the book and walked across her grandmother's writing. It tapped the paper twice with a bare foot, then lifted and flew three paces north before turning back to look at her. The others followed it. They hovered, waiting. Maerin understood then what her grandmother had been trying to record. The fairies came before he did. They had always come before he did. She closed the book, shouldered her satchel, and followed them deeper into the stone trees. For the first time in three winters, she knew she would not miss him.