Misa Moon's Arc

Chapter 5 of 10

The traveler slept on the bench. The fire held. Misa sat on the floor and watched the door, waiting for the next stranger the beacon would pull in. She had until dark to find beds. She had no lumber, no tools shaped for it, and no hands beyond her own and Hades'. "Storeroom," Hades said. They stood without waiting for an answer. "We haven't opened the back room since we cleared the chimney." Misa followed. The door at the rear of the lodge had swollen shut in the damp. Hades set a shoulder against it and shoved. It gave with a crack of old wood. Inside, the air smelled like sawdust and cold stone. Misa lifted her lantern. Four bedframes leaned against the far wall, stacked like cards. Straw mattresses sat rolled and tied on a shelf above them. A folded stack of wool blankets. A crate of iron pegs. Everything was dusty. Nothing was rotted. Misa did not move. Her raven tattoo sat still on her shoulder. She was not wrong about what she was seeing. "Someone left these," she said. "Someone built them and never came back." Hades ran a hand along the top frame. The joints were tight. "Good work. Dry storage kept them." A small weight pressed against Misa's boot. The fox spirit had followed them in. Symbols drifted from its tail and settled on the nearest frame like snow. The wood took the marks and held them. Misa did not ask what the marks did. She had stopped asking. She counted. Four frames. Four mattresses. Enough for tonight and the next few nights, if strangers came in ones and twos. "Take an end," she said. They carried the first frame out. It cleared the doorway with an inch to spare. Misa set it against the wall opposite the hearth and drove the pegs in with the flat of her dagger's hilt. Hades brought the mattress. It thumped down and settled. Misa pressed her palm to it. Straw, tight-packed, dry. They worked without talking. By the time they set the fourth frame, sweat cooled on Misa's neck and the light through the window had gone gray. Hades laid the last blanket flat and stepped back. Four beds. One traveler asleep on the bench, one bench free, four beds ready. Misa sat down on the nearest mattress. It held her weight without a sound. She had not built these. She had not paid for them. She had opened a door and found them waiting, as if the lodge had been keeping them for her. "Someone will come for the story of this," she said. "Sooner than I want." Hades looked at the door. "Then we should decide what we tell them before they get here." Outside, boots crunched in the snow. More than one set. Closer than the bend in the path.