Mercedes Morgan's Arc

Chapter 7 of 21

Morning came gray and still. Mercedes stood at the cave mouth and looked up the slope toward the pass. The roan was calm on its rope. The lame horse stood inside on dry ground. She had a mount, a sled, a cub, and a hare in the pack. What she did not have was any idea what waited on the far side. The last trapper's marks on Aldwin's map stopped at the pass. Beyond that line the paper was blank. If she climbed blind and the weather turned, or the trail split, she could lose the elk sign for good. She untied the roan and led it a short way up the slope to test its feet on the ice. That was when she saw the woman. She stood on a shelf of rock above the trail in a white robe stitched with gold thread, hair pale as the snow around her. Mercedes had walked these woods her whole life and had never seen anyone dressed for a hall this far from one. The woman said her name was Celestia Wayfinder and that she had been watching the fires the last two nights. She said she knew the country past the pass. She had walked with the herds once, before they turned north. She told Mercedes plainly: the trail forked a mile past the summit. The east fork ended at a cliff. The west fork dropped into a valley where the elk had wintered last. She drew the fork in the snow with a stick and marked the safe line. Then she said one horse could not pull the sled up the far grade alone. Two could, if Mercedes hitched them side by side. Mercedes went back to the cave and dug through the trapper's gear stacked against the wall. Under a rolled hide she found a paired wooden hitch, two collars joined by a curved crossbar with iron rings at each end. She carried it out and fit it across the shoulders of both horses, the lame one on the inside where the weight would ride light, the roan on the outside to pull. She buckled the straps slow and checked each ring. The lame horse could walk if it did not haul. The roan could haul if it did not walk alone. Together they leaned into the sled and it moved. When Mercedes looked up to thank the woman in white, the shelf was empty. Only the stick mark in the snow remained. She followed the line Celestia had drawn, up the pass with two horses in harness and the cub quiet on the sled, and by midday she stood at the summit with the west fork open below her and fresh elk sign cut clean into the snow.