Mirella Bogwhisper's Arc

Chapter 5 of 7

The horn from the west path cut off mid-note. Mirella climbed down the tower with the staff in her hand and the winged dog at her heel. She found the two west fairies crouched behind a stump, wings shaking. One pointed at a flat board half-sunk in the moss. A spike of black iron stood from its center, smeared with what looked like sap but was not. The fairy beside her had stepped within a wing's width of it before her partner pulled her back. The horn had fallen from her hand into the reeds. Mirella walked them back to the dandelion and sat them down. She understood the truth then. She had given them posts and bells and told them to watch, but she had not taught them what to watch for. The bog had a hundred warnings and they could not read one. She went to the gourd cabin and dragged out her grandmother's old glass case. Two panes, a cedar base, the hinges stiff with bog damp. Inside her grandmother had pressed cuttings in two rows. On the left, the safe plants: pale reedgrass, white dandelion, soft cotton-head. On the right, the killers: barbroot with its hooked stem, yellow flag that grew thickest over hidden boards, the small green star that meant iron lay under the moss within three steps. Mirella set the case on a flat stone and rang the meeting bell. The whole swarm came. Eleven fairies and the dog, wings and ears up. Mirella opened the case and pointed at each cutting in turn. "Yellow flag means a board. Boards mean a stake. Green star means iron close. You do not step. You do not fly low. You back away and you ring." She made them repeat the names until the smallest one said them without pause. Then she walked them out to the spike on the west path and showed them the yellow flag growing across its lid. One fairy went pale. Another touched the flower and pulled her hand back as if burnt. She spent the afternoon walking each pair to their post. At every guard place she set a small bell frame, weathered bronze on willow poles, so each fairy had a bell of her own to ring. She made each pair point out three warning plants before she left them. The winged dog trailed her the whole loop and learned the marks by scent, nose low at every yellow flag. By dusk all eleven stood at their posts and no one had been cut. The moonpetal's bud had split a finger's width since morning. Mirella climbed the tower and looked west. The fairy who had nearly stepped on the spike was at her bell, eyes on the reeds. Then the dog began to bark from the willows, sharp and steady, the sound Mirella had told it to make only if the moss-covered beast moved.