Mason Crafton's Arc

Chapter 6 of 15

Mason came down through the pines with the linen tight on their arm and the sky graying above the ridge. The metal guardian stood where it had stood all night, blank face turned toward the slope. From the tower above, a lamp still burned. The princess was awake. Mason crouched behind a stump and studied the giant. Its head sat higher than the lowest tower window. Its shoulders were rust and old paint. A cable ran from its heel up into the pines, thin as a fishing line. Mason followed the cable with their eyes. It went to the tower. Mason understood then. The guardian was not a watcher. It was a bell. Step in its circle, and the cable would pull, and the princess above would know a stranger had come. Mason could not go around. The slope on one side dropped to rock. On the other, the pines thinned into open ground under the lamp. The path to the birdbath ran straight through the guardian's feet. Mason searched the ground and found what they needed at the base of a pine: a small yellow puppy asleep on a bed of needles, one of the stray creatures the prince fed on his rounds. It woke and sniffed Mason's hand and did not bark. Mason lifted it and carried it to the edge of the guardian's circle. They set it down and pushed it gently forward. The puppy trotted in, curious, and put its paw on a flat stone near the giant's heel. The cable jerked. High above, a soft bell rang once inside the tower. Mason ran. Not through the circle, but around it, low and fast, while the lamp in the tower swung and a shape moved at the window. The princess would look for a fox, a deer, a puppy. She would see the puppy and call the bell a false alarm. Mason reached the pines on the far side and did not stop until the birdbath sat gray in the clearing below. They dropped behind a log and pressed their good hand to the ground and breathed. The strips of cloth were still in their shirt. The hair was still in the stitching. The arm still held. Behind them, the puppy yipped once and the tower lamp settled. The guardian did not move again. Mason had crossed. But the sky was lighter now, and the prince would come to the birdbath at dawn to speak his words, and Mason was closer than they had ever been. They lay against the log and watched the stone bowl and waited for a voice they had crossed a mountain to steal.