Mary Nova's Arc

Chapter 2 of 4

Mary followed the wolf deeper into the trees. The light thinned. The path narrowed until it ran between two leaning trunks and opened into a small clearing she had not expected. A stone arch stood at the far edge, gray and slick with water. Vines wrapped its pillars. Beyond the arch, the trail split in two, and both forks vanished into a wall of white mist that did not move with the wind. The wolf stopped under the arch and sat. Mary stepped beside it and looked for a sign of which way to go. The mist gave her nothing. She knelt and tried to reach the wolf the way she reached other animals, mind to mind. She felt the shape of it listening, but no words came back. It was like the crow again. She pulled her hand away and stood up. She walked to the left fork and put a foot into the mist. The cold cut through her boot at once. She pulled back and tried the right fork. Same cold. She looked for tracks, broken twigs, anything. The ground under both paths was bare and wet. Then she saw the source. Off to one side of the arch sat a round dome of clouded glass, taller than her knee, sealed at the base. White mist churned inside it and bled out through seams she could not see. The mist on the paths came from there. She pressed her palms to the glass. It was warm. She could not lift it. She could not crack it. The dome did not care that she was there. Mary turned back to the wolf. It was already moving. It walked to the right fork, sniffed once, then trotted to the left and lowered its head. Something at the foot of a vine slipped from its mouth into the moss. The wolf stepped back and watched her. She crossed and picked the thing up. A pendant on a braided cord of vine, a clear crystal set in a small metal cap. When she held it toward the right fork, the crystal stayed dull. When she turned it toward the left fork, a faint light moved inside the stone, steady as a held breath. She looped the cord around her neck. The light brightened against her collarbone. She took one step into the left mist. The cold was still there, but the crystal pulled forward like a hand at her wrist. The wolf went ahead and she followed. Behind her, the right fork stayed silent, and she understood she would not have come back from it. The mist closed around her shoulders. The crystal kept its light. Somewhere past this white nothing was the grove the elder had described, and the beast waiting in it. Mary kept her hand on the stone at her throat and walked.