Marcus Steele's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

By the second night in the trees, Marcus's hands shook when he tried to knot the rope around a low branch for a snare. He had walked a full day north on an empty stomach. The flint in his pocket was useless without something to cook. He had passed two streams and drunk from both, but water only sharpened the ache. He sat down against a trunk and pressed his palms into his eyes. The ridge was still three days off if he kept a steady pace, and he could feel his pace was no longer steady. The gold-haired one landed on his knee. The silver one hovered near his ear and said he would not last another morning at this rate. Marcus did not argue. He asked, because there was nothing left to lose, whether they knew the forest well enough to feed a man. They did. The silver one led him half a mile to a low patch of ground where pale mushrooms grew under a fallen log, and she named the two he could eat and the one he could not. The gold one flew ahead and came back twice, once to point him at a hollow full of hazelnuts the squirrels had missed, and once to warn him off a bog. By full dark he had eaten enough to stop shaking. He built a small fire with the flint and the rope's frayed end for tinder, and he slept with his back to the coals. In the morning the fairies were still there, sitting on a stone by his boots, waiting. Marcus understood then that he would reach the ridge, and that he would reach it owing a debt to two creatures whose price he did not yet know.