Nym's Arc

Chapter 1 of 41

Nym pressed her palm to the dead rose vine outside the manor door. Green climbed back into the stem. Buds opened under her fingers. She had done this a thousand times, and a thousand times she had asked herself the same question: what kind of person healed plants and threw fire from her hands, and where had such a person come from? Margo had found her twenty-one years ago, a baby on a river, and raised her here at Runegate Manor. That was all Nym knew. It was not enough. The black cat wound between her boots and slipped inside ahead of her. Nym followed. She found Margo at the hearth, hood down, silver hair tied back, a wooden box in her lap. The cat leapt to the mantel and watched. "You've asked me for the truth since you could talk," Margo said. She did not look up. "I have none to give. But this is yours." Nym knelt. The box was carved edge to edge with runes she could not read. A seam of dried wax sealed the lid. "It came down the river with you," Margo said. "I have tried every key, every knife, every prayer for twenty-one years. It never opened for me." She held it out. Her hands shook. "Maybe it was never meant to." Nym took it. The wood was cold, then warm, as if it knew her skin. She traced one carved mark with her thumb. Heat rose in her chest, the same heat that fed her fire. "How do I open it?" she asked. "I don't know, child." Margo's voice cracked. "I only know I've kept it too long." Nym set both hands flat on the lid. She thought of the fire she summoned, and she let a thread of it come. Not flame this time. Just the pull of it, the power under her ribs. The runes flared white beneath her palms. The wax split. The seal broke with a sound like ice cracking on the stream. The lid rose on its own. Inside lay a ring, a thin silver necklace, and a folded square of black cloth. Nym lifted the cloth. Beneath it sat a whistle, pale as bone, carved with the same marks as the box. Margo drew a sharp breath. "I never saw what was inside. In all these years." Nym turned the ring in the firelight. Small runes ran along the band, her hands would not stay still. These things had belonged to someone. A mother. A father. A family. People with names. "This proves it," Nym whispered. "Someone left me here on purpose. Someone I can find." Margo reached out and closed her fingers over Nym's hands. "Then you'll leave." It was not a question. Nym looked at the whistle, the ring. The manor had been her whole world. By morning it would not be enough to hold her. She took Mama Margo’s hands and whispered “You’re my Mama and you always will be I will return to you with who I am truly”