Nell Larkspur's Arc

Chapter 4 of 23

Past the ridge the pines closed over the path. The light went green and thin. Nell walked point with the axe across his chest. Lena kept close behind. The fox trotted between them, ears flat, tail low. They had climbed out of the wind and into something quieter, which was worse. A twig snapped to their left. Nell stopped. The fox turned her head but did not look at the sound. She looked past it, deeper in. Nell marked that. Whatever moved out there was not where the noise came from. "Keep walking," he said, low. "Don't run." Lena's hand tightened on the strap of her basket. Her blue-tinted nose was pink at the tip from the cold. "How long has it been there?" "Since the tree line." "You didn't say." "I'm saying now." She nodded once and kept her pace. He liked her for that. The path bent around a stand of old trees grown together at the roots. Moss hung in ropes from the limbs. Blue and violet mushrooms crowded the base in rings. Pale wisps drifted between the trunks at knee height, slow as breath. The air tasted sweet and wrong. Nell had heard woodcutters speak of this glen and refuse to name it. The fox stopped inside the ring of mushrooms. She pressed against Nell's shin and would not move. A branch cracked behind them. Then above. Nell turned. High in the crooked boughs, something white shifted along a limb. He caught the shape of it in pieces—a long back, a tail curled like smoke, small folded wings the color of frost. Blue eyes fixed on Lena. A panther, but not one he knew from any winter. "Lena," he said. "Behind me. Slow." She moved. The panther's shoulders bunched. He would not win a fight in the open. He knew it the way he knew a rotten trunk before he swung. He stepped backward into the ring of mushrooms and pulled Lena with him by the sleeve. The fox stayed at his heel. The wisps rose around them to waist height. The sweet air thickened. The panther dropped from the branch to the path, silent, and paced the edge of the ring. It did not cross the mushrooms. It tried once, lifted a paw, and drew back as if the ground had bit it. It watched them a long moment. Then it turned and went up the slope in three bounds and was gone. Nell did not lower the axe. His hands shook. He had never been glad of fae ground before. Lena let out a breath. "It couldn't come in." "No." "Then we stay here tonight." He looked at her. Blue hair, needle-pricked hands steady on the basket, mouth set. She had decided already. "We stay," he said. "Till first light." The fox lay down between them and did not close her eyes.