Mirella Bogwhisper's Arc

Chapter 1 of 7

Mirella found the third boot print at the base of the willow before dawn. It pressed deep into the mud, heel-heavy, fresh enough that water still seeped into the shape. She crouched and measured it with her hand. A man's print, larger than the one she found two nights ago. The poachers were learning her bog. They were learning when she slept. She carried the morning's count back to the glass watch-house she had built on the only dry rise within sight of the bloom. The dome caught the early light and threw it pink across the reeds. Inside, she kept a stool, a knife, a jar of swamp tea, and a clear view of the moonpetal through every window. Her grandmother had tended this same patch for sixty years and died on a stool much like this one. The flower had not opened for her. It was opening now. The petals were pale and tight as a folded fist, with a thread of gold showing at the seam. Mirella guessed two weeks. Maybe less. She could not sit in the dome for two weeks without sleep. She had tried. Four nights ago she woke with her cheek on the glass and a stranger's lantern moving through the cattails. The bog took him before he reached the bloom. She heard the sound it made when it took him. But the bog was not a fence. It killed the careless. It did not kill the patient, and these new ones were learning patience. She walked the perimeter that morning and counted what she had. Six iron stakes with rusted barbs, sunk along the south path where the firm ground let a man walk upright. Vines had grown over the bases, which was good. They hid the points until a leg was already through. But six stakes covered one path. There were four paths in. She needed eyes on the other three while she slept, and she had no one. Her grandmother was dead. She had no sisters. The nearest fairy hollow stood empty since the last winter, its round door swollen shut, moss climbing the chimney stones. She went to the empty hollow anyway and stood at its door. Two doors, in fact, carved side by side into the old log. She remembered the family that had lived there. A mother and a daughter. The daughter had been her age. The daughter had left for drier country and not come back. Mirella pressed her palm to the wood and made her decision. She could not guard four paths alone. She would have to bring someone into the bog, into the secret, into the risk. That meant trusting a stranger with a flower worth more than most lives. She walked back to the dome and began writing the message she would send downriver by frog.