Meadow's Arc

Chapter 3 of 5

Two days out from the tower, Meadow rode deeper than she had ever gone. Her mother had gifted her a mossback buffalo before she left, a broad beast with moss on its hide and ivy twined through its horns. It carried her fast over roots and stone. Behind them walked Vesper, her scarecrow. His pumpkin face bobbed above the ferns. His root hands twitched at every sound. He could not say much, but he stayed close, and that was enough. Then the buffalo stopped. It snorted and dug its hooves into the dirt. Meadow looked up. A creature blocked the path ahead. Once it might have been a stag. Now brown rot ate its flanks. Its ribs showed through split skin. Black sap dripped from its mouth. One antler had rotted to a stump. Its eyes were milky and wrong. It swung its head toward her and made a wet, grinding sound. "Meadow," Vesper rasped. One word. A warning. She reached for her magic and found only her healing gift. It could mend a wound. It could not fight. It could not calm a thing this far gone. She had no blade, no herb strong enough. The talisman warmed at her throat, but it shielded her, nothing more. The stag lurched forward. The buffalo backed away and nearly threw her. Meadow slid off its back and stood in the path. Astrid's words came to her. Nature answers to you. You belong to it. She had never truly tried. She knelt and pressed both palms flat to the dirt. "Please," she whispered. "Help me." The ground pulsed under her hands. Roots stirred. She felt them the way she felt her own fingers. She did not push her healing at the rot. She pushed it into the soil, into the living wood beneath the sick creature. Roots burst up around the stag's legs. They wound tight and held it fast. The creature thrashed and screamed. Meadow poured her gift down through the roots, into the thing's rotted heart. She could not heal it. She knew that now. The rot had already killed what lived inside. So she did the only kind thing left. She let the roots pull it down. The stag sank into the earth. The soil closed over it. The screaming stopped. Green shoots pushed up where it had stood. Meadow knelt in the sudden quiet, shaking. Vesper touched her shoulder with a root hand. The buffalo crept close and pressed its warm nose to her hair. She had learned something. Her gift did not only mend. It could return the dead to the ground and grow new life from them. But her hands trembled, and cold spread up her arms. Using it had cost her. She was not trained properly yet. She felt dizzy. Where the roots had opened, she saw a path she had not seen before. It led down, into a hollow that stank of rot. The dark had a source. And now the way to it lay open.