Moonpetal's Arc

Chapter 6 of 6

By morning the pen was too small again. Moonpetal knelt beside it and watched the seedling's mouths snap at the last swollen grubs. The blight beneath it had faded to pale brown. Clean, but eaten bare. One more day and the plant would starve. When it starved, it would break the slats and hunt her grove. She needed a new patch of poison, and she needed it now. "There's a bigger one," Sage said. The dragon-woman crouched at the pen's edge, wings folded tight. She had guarded this ridge for years and knew every scar in the valley. "A dead stretch past the ridge. Wide as ten of these. But you'll never carry the plant that far by hand." "Then I'll build something." Moonpetal looked at the thrashing stalk. "A cart. A cover to keep the mouths inside." Hooves struck stone behind her. A centaur climbed the slope, black hair loose, a coil of rope over one shoulder. This was Thalia, a builder who worked the far cottages. Sage had sent for her. Thalia glanced at the snapping plant and did not flinch. "So that's the wolf you're feeding," she said. She unslung her rope and started measuring the pen with her hands. "I can move it. But if it bites through on the road, that's on you." Thalia built fast. She lashed sturdy slats into a deep box and fixed it on two wheels. Over the top she stretched a heavy cover, cinched tight at every edge. Moonpetal poured the last of the grub tonic across the dying blight. The grubs heaved up fat. While the seedling gorged, the three of them tipped the pen and rolled the plant into the covered cart. The mouths struck the cover from inside. The cloth bulged and held. Thalia took the cart's handles and hauled. Moonpetal walked beside it, one hand on the frame, feeling every jolt as the plant threw itself at the walls. Sage flew ahead to scout the ground. They crested the ridge. Below spread the dead expanse Sage had promised. Cracked soil ran gray and endless, veined with red rot, scattered with dry roots and pale scars. Green ooze wept from a hundred seams. Enough poison to feed the plant for weeks. They drove the cart to the center and set the seedling into the deepest crack. Its roots gripped the taint at once. The mouths dove down and tore at the grubs already writhing up from the rot. Moonpetal watched the soil darken and settle around the base. "It'll clean all of this," she said. "Room to grow." Thalia coiled her rope. "It'll clean it and want more." She nodded at the plant, already taller than when they'd loaded it. "A patch that size won't last a beast that grows that fast. You bought days. Not weeks." Moonpetal looked across the vast dead ground. She had a feeding field now. And a hunger racing to outgrow it.