Maple Jack's Arc

Chapter 10 of 14

Maple Jack stood quiet after the Yellowknife spark left him. The wind had dropped. Twelve red sparks rested in his south branches, and one small yellow spark sat deep inside his trunk, tucked behind a knot of heartwood that had grown around it like a wooden chest. He could feel the grain of that hollow holding the yellow spark warm. Then he felt the cold come. It started at the dead north limb. A shard of frost grew along the scarred wood, clear and sharp, with edges like cut glass. It pushed inward through the old rot-channel the imp had left. Maple Jack watched the frost crawl past the split in his bark and into the live wood beneath. Below the shard, on the snow, a small set of tracks circled his roots. He bent his crown to look. A pale blue creature crouched against his trunk, horns curled back, claws hooked into his bark. It held a small book pressed to its chest. Its breath fogged in tight curls. It was sniffing for the yellow spark. Maple Jack could not strike it. He had no pale sparks to pair against it, and his north side was already lost. If the cold imp reached the heartwood hollow, the last unripe story would freeze before it ever ripened. He looked at his twelve red sparks. Each was ready for a wind he did not have. He chose the heaviest, a story about a fisherman who shared his catch with a stranger on a dock, and lowered it down the inside of his trunk. He pressed it against the wall of the hollow where the yellow spark slept. The red spark's heat bloomed into the wood. The hollow warmed. The yellow spark drank from it. The frost shard cracked. The cold imp jerked its claws back from the bark. It hissed and clutched its book tighter, but the warmth pushed it down the trunk and out onto the snow. It scrabbled at the roots, then turned and ran, leaving a thin line of melt behind it. Maple Jack felt the red spark settle into the hollow wall, no longer a spark but a steady ember, spent on shelter instead of flight. Eleven red sparks remained in his branches. The yellow spark was safe, and warmer than before. He had bought the small one's life with one of the grown ones. He would need a wind soon for the eleven, or he would have to burn another to keep the cold out, and then another, until there was nothing left to send.