Morwenna haven's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

The next night Morwenna walked deeper than before. Her candle burned steady in her hand. The false daughter had tricked her once. She would not follow a voice again. Tonight she looked for the real ones with her eyes, not her ears. She told herself her children would wait quietly. They would not call and run. The trees changed as she went. Purple leaves hung thick overhead, veined with teal. Pale shapes drifted through the branches, half-seen, never still. She did not chase them. She passed under a great gnarled trunk wrapped in faint wisps. Small ghost faces floated in its crown, watching her. They did not speak her daughter's name. That was how she knew they were only trees full of strangers. A crow dropped onto a low branch ahead. Its body glowed faint blue, see-through, with trailing feathers like smoke. It fixed one bright eye on her candle. Then it hopped farther down the path and looked back. It wanted her to follow. Morwenna hesitated. A voice she could not trust. But this was no voice. It made no promises and spoke no name. She followed the crow through the glowing grove. Spirit figures peeked from trunk after trunk. The crow led her to a clearing. A grey stone fountain stood at its center, cracked and old. Luminous mushrooms grew along its tiers. Water drifted up instead of down, soft and slow. Ghosts rose with the mist and sank again. Morwenna stepped closer. Around the fountain's base a ring of spirits held hands. Their forms linked hand to hand, glowing pale, turning in a slow circle. She counted them. Not three. Many. None wore her daughter's shape. None turned to her. They did not know her at all. She stood at the edge and waited. The cold passed through her chest, the way it always did. She had told herself that cold was her children. Now she watched these strangers circle and felt the same cold. It was only the forest. It touched everyone the same. Her children were not here. Morwenna's hand shook. She had walked this forest every night. She had believed the trees leaned for her, that the cold held her. Tonight she saw plainly. The spirits here were not her family. They were lost people who did not know her name. The crow watched from the fountain's rim. Morwenna knelt by the water. She looked into it and saw her own veiled face lit by the flame. "You are not mine," she said to the circling dead. "But you are someone's." She understood now. Her family was not simply waiting among the first trees. If she wanted them, she had to learn this place. She had to find who these spirits were, and who might lead her further. She rose. The crow lifted off and flew ahead, and Morwenna followed it into the deeper wood.