Miles Craftwood's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Miles Craftwood had three weeks to deliver a Master submission piece, and no wood worth carving. He stood at his workbench before dawn and stared at the empty clamps. The bench was a heavy thing, reinforced at the corners, marked with the burn-grooves of every project he had finished to qualify for this trial. One piece left. A carved lockbox in heart-grain ironwood, hinged without metal. If the panel he submitted was clean, he became a Master Crafter. If it cracked, he waited another two years for the next trial. Ironwood grew in one place anyone trusted: a grove past the ridge his trail map didn't cover. Miles had hiked the near forest for years. He knew which creeks ran in August and which deer paths circled back. Past the ridge was a blank square on his chart. The crafters who had gone in for ironwood came back with planks or did not come back at all. He packed before he could talk himself out of it. Backpack, walking stick, the leather-wrapped fire kit he had spent six weeks getting right. Hatchet. Two days of food. He climbed for half a morning and reached the landmark every map showed as the end of safe ground: a stone cave mouth braced by mossed boulders, the inside black even at noon. Claw scrapes ran along the lower stones. The crafters called the animal that denned there a redmaw, and they said you smelled it before you saw it. Miles smelled nothing. He kept the cave on his left and walked past it into the unmapped slope. The trees changed within an hour. The trunks went dark and narrow, bark like cooled iron, the canopy so tight the ground stayed damp at midday. He had found the grove. He pressed his thumbnail into a fallen branch and it left no mark. Small red squirrels watched him from the lower limbs, no bigger than the acorns at his feet, still as carvings. He picked a leaning trunk already split by a winter storm, set his hatchet, and worked until he had a clean billet long enough for the lockbox panel. He wrapped it in his spare shirt and turned back the way he came. The cave mouth was no longer empty. The redmaw stood in front of the stones, head low, mouth open on a second row of teeth. Its eyes caught the light red. Miles was downwind and carrying fresh-cut ironwood that smelled like nothing the bear had a reason to fear. The walking-stick trick would not work twice. He stepped backward off the trail into the brush, slow, the billet pressed against his ribs, and understood that he had his wood and no clear way home.