Moonbeam Shadows's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

Moonbeam Shadows reached the gate with the dull feather still in his hand. The wooden frame stood taller than him, its iron hinges pitted with rust, its base ringed by clustered mushrooms that leaned toward the heart beyond. He set his palm on the wood and felt the old protection under it, humming low, waiting for a name. Behind him, past the last marker cone, a door creaked open at the tree line. He turned. The half-fox woman had come out of her cabin. She walked barefoot through the wet grass, one hand pressed to her ribs, the other trailing at her side. Her fingers were black to the second knuckle. She moved slow, but she moved straight at him. If she reached the gate, she would speak, and the old thing on the other side would hear her voice and wake. He stepped away from the wood to meet her on the path. He did not want a fight. A fight would ring through the ground and reach the keeper faster than her voice. He wanted her quiet, the way he had made the wind quiet. She stopped ten paces off. She looked at the feather in his hand. "That was mine to give back," she said. Her voice was thin. The black in her fingers had climbed to her wrist. "You cannot reach the gate," he said. "I know." She swayed and caught herself. "I came anyway." He knelt and pressed his free hand to the soil between them. His dark went down and spread, the same silence he had used on the wind, wider now, aimed at her chest. She opened her mouth to call out. No sound came. She tried again. Her lips shaped a word he could not hear. The black sap under her skin answered his dark and slid further up her arm. Her knees folded. She sat down in the grass without a cry, staring at him, still awake, still trying. A small light lifted off her shoulder. A pink-haired fairy the size of his thumb rose from the fold of her collar, wings shivering, purple eyes fixed on him. She had been hiding against the woman's neck. She darted past his shoulder toward the gate before he could close his hand on her. She struck the old wood with both palms. The hum under the frame changed pitch. Once. Twice. A knock the keeper would feel in its roots. Moonbeam Shadows caught the fairy on the third strike and folded his dark around her until her light went out in his fist. He set her small body down beside the woman in the grass. The woman was still watching him, mute, her hand open in the dirt. The gate had heard. Something on the other side had turned its face toward the sound. He had silenced the messenger, and he had silenced the fox, but he had not been fast enough. The keeper knew he was here.