Meredith Seertree's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Meredith knelt at the edge of the spore field, her sister's coded journal pressed under her arm. She had tried six times to crack it. Six failures, each one logged in neat handwriting. Tonight she had come to the woods for quiet, for thinking room, for some new angle on the same locked pages. A flicker moved in the haze. A small dragon-shaped creature shimmered into view, scales catching the green light. It hovered, watching her, then darted off between the trunks. Meredith followed because she did not know what else to do. It led her to a door set into the side of a low hill. Carved tree rings spiraled inward across the wood, and tiny script ran along every ring. The pattern matched the journal exactly. Same hand. Same code. Same impossible spiral inward. At the center of the door, etched plain as a label, was a name. Not hers. Loondin Fawnpath. She knew that name. She had heard it somewhere, in passing, in some half-remembered conversation her sister once trailed across a kitchen. Meredith stepped back. Through the trees, she saw a tall lantern on a post, moths drifting inside its glass. A wooden plaque at its base bore the same surname. A marker. A home, maybe. A direction. She closed the journal and tucked it tight against her chest. She had said she was not ready to speak to the one person who knew. That was yesterday's rule. Tonight the code had written someone else's name, and the woods had shown her where to find them.