Ninka Evertrue's Arc

Chapter 11 of 29

Ninka went back inside her cabin with the ring warm on her finger. The children were asleep in the hidden cabins. Luna was asleep on the floor by the door. Ninka should have been asleep too. She sat on the edge of her cot and closed her eyes and tried to feel the meadow the way she used to, all at once, every corner. She got nothing. Static. Her gift felt like a radio tuned between stations. She knew what that meant. She had spent it. The portal, the dragon, the ring, the children. If her father crossed the ring's edge before dawn, she would not feel him coming. She would not feel anything. She needed to sleep and project at the same time. Rest the body. Send the mind up to watch the road. She had never held both. Last time she tried, she got stuck three states away with water on the table and a phone timer on the floor. Luna woke when Ninka stood. "Where." "I need the hammock from the porch. The one Kaia drew for me." Luna carried it in without asking why. It hung itself between two beams and floated a hand's width off the ground. Tassels swayed. The cushions smelled like clean cotton and something older, like a garden after rain. "Watch my body," Ninka said. "If I don't come back by first light, pinch my ear until I do." "That's your plan." "That's my plan." She climbed in. The hammock took her weight and gave it back softer. Her shoulders unlocked. Her jaw unlocked. She had not known her jaw was locked. She called for the spider before she was fully under. It came out from the corner beam where it had been waiting, big as a dinner plate, black fur brushed with purple. Its eyes caught the lamp and threw the light back at her. She had found it in the meadow the day the cabin rose. It had followed her ever since. Tonight she needed it in the other place. "Come up with me," she said. "Keep the line clean." The spider climbed onto her chest. Light as breath. It set one leg on her collarbone and one on her wrist and looked at her with all its eyes. She let go. She rose out of the cabin and the meadow spread below her in the dark. The ring's edge showed as a soft line in the grass, a mile out. Beyond it, headlights crawled the ridge road. One car. Moving slow. She felt for the fishing line her father used and found it. The spider bit it clean through. The line snapped back into the dark like cut fishing wire. Her gift steadied. She could feel every cabin. Every sleeping child. The car on the ridge, and the man inside it, turning at the crossroad, coming down.