Mary Nova's Arc

Chapter 3 of 4

The mist thinned as Mary walked. The crystal at her throat dimmed, then steadied to a low glow. The trees on either side stood farther apart now, and the ground turned to packed dirt under her boots. Ahead, the wolf slowed. Then it stopped. It planted its paws and would not take another step. Mary caught up and saw why it had picked this spot. A ring of standing stones rose from the bare earth, each one taller than her waist. Deep claw marks scored the gray faces, four parallel grooves on every stone, all at the same height. The dirt inside the ring was smooth, as if something had paced there for a long time. The wolf sat at the edge of the circle and pressed its shoulder against a broken slab leaning at the rim. The slab was a grave marker, cracked through the middle, moss filling the seams. Letters had been cut into it once. Most were worn off. Mary knelt by the wolf. Its nine tails lay flat against the ground. It would not look at her. It looked past the stones, down the path, where the trees closed in again. She followed its eyes and saw the shape further on. A cairn stood in the middle of the trail. Stacked rock climbed to a point above her head, and animal skulls ringed the base. Deer, fox, something with long curved teeth she did not know. The skulls all faced outward, toward anyone coming up the path. She tried the wolf the way she had tried before. Mind to mind. This time she felt something back. Not words. A pulled-in feeling, small and tight, the way a rabbit holds still under a hawk. The wolf was afraid. It pressed harder against the grave marker, and she understood the stone was cover. It was hiding. Mary stood and looked at the claw marks again. Four grooves. The same on every stone. Whatever made them was big, and it came back to this ring often enough to wear the dirt smooth. The cairn ahead was a warning, set by someone or something that wanted the path closed. She could keep going and walk into whatever paced this circle. Or she could trust the animal that had led her this far and had never been wrong. She crouched and put her hand on the wolf's back. "Not that way," she said. She lifted the pendant and turned slowly. The crystal stayed dim toward the cairn. When she faced a narrow gap between two of the standing stones, the light woke. A thin trail ran out the other side of the ring, low and half-hidden under fern. The wolf rose at once and slipped through the gap. Mary followed. Behind her, the skulls kept their watch on an empty path, and the thing that paced the ring did not yet know she had passed.