Nell Larkspur's Arc

Chapter 14 of 23

Nell walked until the trees closed over the path. He stopped behind a boulder and pulled the linen map from his coat. His fingers left blood on the corner. He traced the marks past the ridge, past the clearing with the cold fire, to the small circle of trees the librarian had inked thirty-one years ago. Half a mile. Maybe less. He had no plan. He had an axe, a cut arm, and their scent stuck to him. He needed the Fae outside the ring when he went in. He needed noise on one side of the trees and silence on the other. He cut a strip from the bloody rag on his arm and tied it to a low branch off the path. He walked twenty paces west and tied another. He kept going, laying a line of red scraps that pointed away from the ring. When the last strip was gone, he doubled back through the brush, quiet, low, breathing through his mouth. He smelled the ring before he saw it. Sweet and wrong, like fruit left too long. A circle of slim pale trees stood knotted together, mushrooms clustered thick at their roots, vines braided between the trunks. Light moved inside without a source. Three Fae paced the outer edge. Tall. Long-armed. Skin the color of wet bark. They lifted their heads at once and turned west, toward the blood line. One hissed. They ran. Nell counted to ten and moved. He slipped between two trunks into the ring. Linny lay curled on the moss. Purple hair matted to her cheek. Her lips were blue. Her chest rose thin and slow. Vines wrapped her wrists and ankles, green shot through with black veins. Nell dropped beside her and pressed two fingers under her jaw. A pulse. Barely. "Linny." He kept his voice low. "Your sister sent me." Her eyes cracked open. She didn't speak. He worked the axe blade under the vine at her wrist and sawed. The vine bled clear sap and hissed. He cut through one wrist, then the other. Her hand fell open. He moved to her ankles. The vines fought him, tightening, then snapping. He gathered her up. She weighed nothing. Her head lolled against his shoulder. "Stay with me," he said. "Your mother's magic. It's keeping you. Stay." He turned toward the gap in the trunks. Three shapes dropped through the canopy into the ring behind him. He spun. The Fae landed in a crouch inside the circle, all three, mushrooms crushed under their bare feet. The nearest one smiled. Its teeth were small and even. "You wear her scent," it said. "And your own." Nell shifted Linny into his left arm and raised the axe with his right. His back hit the pale trunks. The ring that was supposed to hold them out held them in with him.