Mira Felweave's Arc

Chapter 1 of 4

Mira Felweave crouched behind the giant rose bush and pressed a hand to her mouth so the villagers would not hear her breathe. She was part girl and part cat, and her claws had pushed through her fingertips again without asking. Torchlight moved between the trees. A man shouted that the monster had been seen near the well, and a woman answered that it had killed a goat, though Mira had killed nothing. She only wanted to reach the old healer's cottage past the tavern and ask if a curse like hers could be unmade. She wanted to be held once without cutting whoever held her. A dog bayed. The torches turned toward the rose bush. Mira pulled deeper into the thorns, and the thorns opened her arm from wrist to elbow. She bit down on her sleeve and did not make a sound. Something landed in the dirt beside her. Not a villager. A small beast with bat wings folded tight, twisted goat horns, and a wolf's teeth showing when he breathed. Flowers were stitched crookedly onto his vest. Mira's claws snapped out toward his throat before she could stop them. He did not move. "Don't," he said. "I'm Fennel. I help things the woods want to keep." His voice was low and even. She lowered her hand. Blood ran down her fingers into the leaves. "They'll kill you," Fennel said. "They've brought dogs." "I have to get to the healer," Mira whispered. "Past the tavern with the pastel sign. She knows old curses." "Not tonight. Tonight you live." He tilted his head toward the far side of the bush. "There's a drainage cut behind these canes. Goes under the road. Follow it to the stream. I'll pull the dogs west." "Why?" Fennel looked at her claws, then at her face. "Because you didn't use those on me." A torch swung close. Fennel spread his wings and crashed out through the top of the rose bush, snarling loud enough to shake petals loose. The dogs broke after him. The men followed the dogs. Mira heard the pack thunder off through the underbrush. She crawled into the drainage cut on her belly. The stone was cold. Her arm left a dark smear behind her. She counted her breaths the way she had counted them by the door, waiting for the man who never came back, and she kept moving. The cut opened onto a stream. She washed the blood off her claws and looked west, where the torches still burned, and east, where the healer's cottage waited past the tavern with its soft painted sign. She could not go to the healer now. The villagers would circle back by morning, and every path into the village was watched. Fennel had bought her a night, nothing more. She needed a cure the villagers could not block, and she needed someone who knew where such a cure was kept.