Mirella Marshlight's Arc

Chapter 4 of 5

The whispered name still hung in the cold air as Mirella stepped past the glowing stone. The cave opened into a wider chamber. A shallow pool sat in the center, its surface trembling with reflected light. Fireflies drifted above it in slow loops. Her bracelet pulsed once against her wrist, the teal threads brightening as if answering the water. She knelt at the edge. The name she had spoken rose in her throat again, softer this time. The pool flared. And something inside her broke open. She was small. Someone was carrying her fast through the dark. A woman's hair brushed her cheek, tied back with a pale yellow scarf covered in butterflies and tiny sparkling stones. A man ran beside them, his breath ragged. They were not strangers. They were hers. She remembered the smell of woodsmoke and crushed mint on their clothes. She remembered laughter, before the running. She remembered being loved. Mirella gasped and pressed her hands to the stone. The memory kept coming. She saw the chamber she now stood in, but lit by torches. She saw the pale figure rising from the water at the far end, a tall statue of a person seated in the pool, eyes closed, hands folded. Her mother had turned her face away from it. Her father had whispered the same name carved on the stone, and his voice had shaken. They had set her down. They had run the other way to draw it off. They had meant to come back. The memory snapped shut. Mirella was kneeling again, alone, shaking. Across the pool, half-sunk in the shallow water, lay the yellow scarf. Faded now. Butterflies dulled. It had waited here all these years. She lifted it with both hands. Her parents had not thrown her away. They had hidden her and run, and something had stopped them from returning. The not-knowing was gone. In its place sat a colder question, heavier than the first. Whatever they had feared was still here. And it knew her name now too.