Mira Goldenroot's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Mira Goldenroot was tying dried yarrow to the drying rack when the floor spoke her name. It was not a voice she heard with her ears. It came up through the soles of her boots, a slow pull like a hand closing around her ankle. She dropped the bundle. Her knees folded before she told them to. The clay jars on the shelf rattled once and went still. She had known this day would come since she was old enough to understand what her mother had bargained away. The old kings below had a claim on her blood. When she turned of age, they would call, and she would go down and take the crown of roots and stone. Mira wanted the throne above ground, the herbkeeper's trade, the small painted door of her roundhouse, a life she chose. The summons did not care what she wanted. Her copper fox came out from under the cot and pressed its ribs against her shin. The pale tip of its tail flicked once. Mira set her palm on its back and felt her own pulse steady against the animal's. The pull eased half a finger's width. Not enough. Her heels were already sinking into the packed earth of the floor. She crawled to the door and shoved it open. Cold air hit her face. Cora Fenwick stood on the stone path with her hood up and her braids wet from the mist, as if she had been waiting to be needed. Behind her, small and wide-eyed in a leather apron, Dara Wren carried a covered basket. "You feel it," Cora said. It was not a question. Mira nodded because her jaw had locked. Cora knelt and drew a circle in the dirt around Mira's boots with a piece of chalk from her belt. "A circle won't break the claim," she said. "It will only buy you an hour. After that you decide." Dara opened the basket. Inside were three things: a knot of Mira's own hair her mother had saved, a river stone, and a folded page torn from a ledger with a name on it Mira had never let herself read aloud. Dara's hands shook. Mira took the stone first. It was warm. The pull in her feet stuttered and stopped. She stood up inside the chalk ring. Her boots came free of the floor with a soft sucking sound. The copper fox sat at the edge of the circle and watched the ground where she had been sinking. Mira looked at the folded page in the basket and did not open it yet. "An hour," she said. Her voice worked again. "Then I go find who made the bargain, and I unmake it." Cora stood. Dara closed the basket. Outside the roundhouse, the mist thickened, and beneath the floor, something waited.