Mirella Bogwhisper's Arc

Chapter 7 of 7

By midmorning the fairies had hung small glass lanterns along the path to the bloom. Each held a knot of glowing swamp moss sealed behind clear panes. The fairies said the light helped them see the yellow flags and green stars at night. Mirella let them keep the lanterns. She did not think about how far the light carried over flat water. The winged dog brought her the first warning at dusk. It landed on the watchtower rail with mud on its paws and growled toward the tree line beyond the south path. Mirella climbed down and followed it past the dandelion marker. At the bog's outer edge she found a ring of trampled reeds, a cold fire pit, and a shack of rotten boards with deer hides nailed to the roof. Boot prints led from the door toward her bog. Scouts had come close enough to build. She followed the prints a short way and stopped at a low stone ruin she had not seen in years. Someone had cleared the gaps in its broken walls. A flat board sat inside with a tin cup and a scrap of paper marked in charcoal. The marks counted lanterns. Four for the south path. Two near the bloom. A line drawn toward the bend where her thorn wall stood. The scouts had been watching from the ruin for several nights. Mirella went back at a run and called the fairies in. She told them the lights had been seen. She told them to take every lantern down before dark and hood the moss in wet cloth. Two of the fairies asked how the poachers would find the bloom without the lanterns to follow. Mirella said that was the point. Then she pulled the charm vial from her collar, the one with bog water and her own feather inside, and held it up so they all could see. She told them the vial was the only thing that made a body kin to the bog. Without it, the bog would handle the rest. That night she set the winged dog at the south path and waited in the willows with her staff. Two scouts came through the trees an hour after moonrise, following the line they had drawn on their paper. They reached the place where the lanterns should have been and stopped. One whispered. The other turned in a slow circle. Then the ground gave under the first scout's boot and an iron stake went through his foot. He screamed. His partner ran back the way they had come and did not look behind him. Mirella let him go. A runner was what she wanted. By dawn the shack at the edge was empty and the stone lookout was empty too. The fire pit was cold. She walked the line and pulled the wounded scout's body off the stake and into the deep water. The bog took him. But the runner had seen the path, and the runner had a mouth, and somewhere past the trees other men were already listening.