Mirella Bogwhisper's Arc

Chapter 6 of 7

The dog's bark held steady from the willows. Mirella climbed back down the tower and crossed the moss with her iron staff in hand. She found the beast where the dog had cornered it, half-hidden in the reeds, jaw still raw from her last strike. It did not run this time. It bared its teeth and stepped toward her. She backed away one slow step at a time until she reached the dandelion, then she rang the meeting bell three times hard. The fairies came at a run. She sent two to fetch the dog and the rest to the moonpetal. On the way she saw what the beast had left behind. A pool of dark red water sat where the creature had bled and drunk, ringed with cracked deer bones it had dragged in. Past it lay a heap of older remains, skulls and ribs piled in the wet grass. The fairies stared. Mirella told them to keep moving. She wanted them to see it. She wanted them to know the thing would not turn back. She set them to work at the narrow place where the path bent toward the bloom. She told them to cut willow poles and drag in every length of barbroot vine they could pull. They wove the vines around the poles and drove the sharpened ends into the mud. By the time the moon rose, a thorned wall stood across the path, waist high to a deer and chest high to the beast. Behind it Mirella propped the old rusted gate her grandmother had left leaning against the cabin, iron bars laced with bog ivy. She wedged the gate upright with stones and tied it to the wall with reed rope. She placed the fairies in two rows behind the gate. The front pair held iron-tipped poles through the bars. The back pair held bells. The dog she set at her own heel. She told them no one stepped out from behind the gate for any reason. If the beast broke the thorns, they were to ring and fall back to the moonpetal. The beast came near the middle of the night. It hit the thorn wall low and the barbroot caught it across the shoulders. It pulled back, bleeding, and came again. This time the poles met it through the bars. Mirella drove her staff into its wounded jaw and the front pair stabbed at its chest. It screamed and tore loose and ran into the dark. The thorn wall held. The gate held. No fairy fell. In the morning Mirella walked the line. The vines were torn but standing. The bloom was untouched, its bud split wider than yesterday. The dog limped but kept its post. The beast was still out there, somewhere in the bog, and now it knew the gate. Mirella sent a fairy to the tower to watch the other three paths.