Mercedes Morgan's Arc

Chapter 1 of 21

Mercedes Morgan had walked the old elk paths since the first hard freeze, and by the third week her map was still blank. She was an elf of Icebenz, raised on stories of the sacred herds her grandmother had followed as a girl. The herds were gone before Mercedes could remember them. She wore the blue elk skin coat her grandmother had cut and stitched while the animals still moved through these woods. The coat was proof the herds had been real. The empty trees were proof no one had brought them back. She knelt by a frozen stream and pressed her palm to the snow. No prints. No droppings. No cropped bark. She had counted on finding a lead before her food ran out, and her pack was already light. Without a track to follow, she could not tell the living forests from the dead ones, and searching every valley in Icebenz would kill her before spring. She stood up. Her breath hung white. She had to turn back or find someone who still remembered where the animals had gone. Smoke pulled her east through the pines. She found a low hut banked with snow and a huge horse tied under a lean-to, a Clydesdale with a white coat and a heavy palomino mane that steamed in the cold. The door opened before she knocked. The old man inside was shorter than she was, bearded, wrapped in green and brown, a walking stick in one hand and a string of dried berries at his throat. He said his name was Aldwin Silverleaf. He said he had been waiting for someone to ask the right question. Mercedes asked it. Had he seen any elk, anywhere, ever again. Aldwin set down his stick and went to a shelf above the hearth. He brought down a rolled hide and spread it on the table. Inked across it was a line of cloven tracks curving north, ending at the base of a single mountain. He said a trapper had traded him the map two winters ago and sworn the prints were fresh. He had never been strong enough to make the ride himself. The Clydesdale outside was his, and the map was hers, if she meant to use both. Mercedes rolled the hide and tied it to her belt. By dusk she had the horse saddled and her face turned north. The search had a direction now, and a clock: the mountain was far, the snow was deep, and Aldwin had given away the last thing keeping him fed.