Maerin Thornwick's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Maerin followed the fairies until her lantern guttered. The oil had burned down faster than she planned, and the stone trees ahead drank what little flame she had left. She shook the lantern. A finger of oil sloshed at the bottom. The fairies kept moving, six small lights threading between the petrified trunks, and she could not lose them now. She pinched the wick lower and walked faster. The deep wood closed behind her. She counted her steps to keep panic out of her chest. Forty paces in, the fairies veered left around a fallen trunk and vanished. Maerin stopped. Her lantern showed only gray bark and her own breath. Then she saw the glow ahead, low to the ground, steady. She walked toward it. The fairies had settled on the rim of a round stone basin half-sunk in the forest floor. Water shimmered inside it, pale gold, lit from below. The six lights sat along the cracked edge and did not move. Maerin knelt. She blew out her lantern to save the last of the oil. The basin gave enough light to see her own hands. She waited. He came out of the trees the way he always did, without sound, as if the wood had agreed to part for him. The Last Keeper of Roots stood across the basin from her. His face was thinner than the last time. She could see the grain of stone under his skin. She fumbled in her satchel and brought out the sprig of sage she had carried for him since the new moon. She held it out across the water. He stepped forward and opened his hand. She laid the sage in his palm. He closed his fingers, then opened them. Three sprigs lay there now, then five, then a small green bundle that smelled sharp and alive in the cold air. He set the bundle back in her hand and folded her fingers around it. His touch was cool and dry. He bent and pressed his mouth to the back of her wrist. Then he stepped backward into the trees and was gone. The fairies lifted from the basin and followed him. Maerin sat in the dark with the sage warm against her palm. She had come for an answer and he had given her one she did not know how to read. He had fed her. He had marked her. He had left again. She would have to come back.