Mason Crafton's Arc

Chapter 4 of 15

Mason reached the deep woods by moonrise with the cloth folded inside their coat. The hair was there. The thread was there. But holding a piece of the prince was not the same as knowing what to do with it. The prince had sent his gift up the mountain wrapped in ritual — a ruby bound to a lock of hair, carried by a jewel bird, answered by a scale. Mason had the pieces and none of the pattern. Without the ritual, the cloth was just cloth. Mason crouched beside a fallen log and tried to think it through. The dragon had come down for hair and a stone. That much was clear. But the prince had done something else too, something Mason had watched from the treeline for three weeks and never understood. He had spoken to the dragon first. Every morning at the birdbath at the forest's edge, he stood alone and said the same short words before the birds flew. Mason had been too far to hear them. Without those words, a bird carrying blond hair might be met with fire. A branch cracked behind them. Mason turned. Between two trunks stood a thing taller than a man, hunched, its arms hanging past its knees. Yellow eyes. Long claws. It did not move. Mason recognized it from the farmhand's story that had spread through the valley — one of the creatures from beyond the second stream. It should have torn Mason apart already. It only watched. Mason understood then. The creature was waiting to see what Mason was. A stranger in the deep woods, carrying the prince's scent on stolen cloth. Mason pulled the strip with the blond hairs from their coat and held it out flat on their palm. The creature stepped closer. It sniffed the cloth. It sniffed Mason's torn sleeve. Then it turned and walked back into the trees without a sound. The forest thought Mason belonged to the prince. The cloth worked on the small creatures. It would not work on the dragon without the words. Mason sat down against the log and pressed a hand to their eyes. The plan had a hole in it now, a clear one. To finish this, Mason had to hear the prince speak to the birdbath. That meant going back to the forest's edge before dawn, close enough to hear a whisper, while the princess watched the sky from her platform and the jewel birds swept the open ground. The smoke trick was spent. Mason would need a new way in. But the cloth had passed its first test tonight, and the deep woods had let Mason live. It was enough to move on.