Matthew Sharpclaw's Arc

Chapter 8 of 12

The ink dried. The man rolled the scroll and tucked it away. Matthew stood up slowly. His knees felt strange, like they belonged to someone else. Behind him, Rarespot had not moved. The name the man kept saying sat between them like a stone neither could step around. "Vesna," Matthew said. Not a question. He turned to look at her. Snow caught in her fur. She would not meet his eyes. A frosted birch stood beyond her shoulder, pale and bare, every branch sharp against the gray sky. It looked like a thing that had been waiting a long time to be noticed. Rarespot's voice came out quiet. "That was her name. The woman who had you first. The woman who tried to make sure you were never born." She finally looked at him. "Redtail and I took you. We took a new name with you. We buried Vesna in a field we never went back to." Her hands shook at her sides. "We didn't tell you because there was nothing of her worth giving you." Matthew breathed in. The cold burned his throat. He had thought Vesna was a code, a hidden past, some danger his mother had outrun. Not this. Not a woman who had not wanted him. He looked at Rarespot — at the mom who had hugged him over a B, who had built a whole life so he would never have to carry this name — and the cold thing in his chest cracked open. "Then she's nothing," Matthew said. His voice was steady. "You're my mom. You and Redtail. That's what's true." The hooded man laughed once, low, and tugged the lead at Matthew's wrist. Behind the ridge, the roc called — long and bright, searching. Rarespot's ears lifted. Matthew shook his head at her. "Go. Tell Redtail. Tell Lyra. I signed for a reason. Don't make it for nothing." Rarespot pressed her palm to his cheek, hard and quick, and ran. The roc dropped over the ridge to meet her. The hooded man led Matthew the other way, toward a dark mouth in the rock where a stone cave opened beneath shattered spears of ice. Matthew did not look back. He carried the name his mothers had chosen for him into the dark. Vesna stayed buried in the snow behind him, where she belonged.