Orin Ember's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Every night, Orin Ember plants his feet at the edge of the village and does not move until dawn. He is a stone giant, moss on his shoulders, a cracked iron breastplate on his chest. His fists are worn smooth from years of blocking blows for people who never learned to thank him. Tonight he wants one thing. He wants to carve his true name into the village stone, so someone will remember the watcher when the moss finally swallows him. But when he lifts his hand to cut the first letter, he stops. He does not know his own name. He presses a stone finger against the flat rock. He tries to remember the first sound anyone ever spoke over him. Nothing comes. He has guarded these houses for longer than the oldest villager has been alive, and no one ever called him anything at all. He leaves his post before dawn for the first time. He walks into the forest, toward the ring of old monoliths where he first woke. Vines hang from the leaning stones. Moss fills every crack. He remembers opening his amber eyes here, cold and new, with no word for himself. He searches the stones for carved letters. His broad hand sweeps the moss away. Halfway around the ring, a spider drops in front of him. It is huge, its legs jointed and dark, its body marked like bark and shadow. It rears back to strike. Orin swings his fist and knocks it into the brush. It scrambles away. Behind the stone it guarded, pale blossoms glow. A cascading vine covers the rock, its flowers soft as moonlight. Orin peels the vine away with two fingers. Beneath it, cut deep into the granite, he finds words. "You won't read them." The voice is gentle and clear. A young woman steps from the shadow of a leaning stone. Antlers rise from her head. Her hands are gone, replaced by rough bark that spreads to her wrists. Her silk gown hangs in tatters. She curtsies to him, perfect and slow, as if he were a lord and not a pile of walking rock. "I am Calla Greenwick," she says. "I have read this stone a hundred times. It names the one who set the guardian here. It does not name the guardian." Orin looks at the carving. She is right. The letters name a maker long dead. There is no name for the thing that was made. "Then I have no name," he says. His voice grinds like sliding rock. Calla tilts her antlered head. "No," she says. "You have no name yet. That is different." Orin stares at the empty stone. He came for a name to carve, and he found proof there is none to find. But the woman with bark for hands looks at him as if the matter is not closed. He turns from the old ring and walks back toward the village, and for the first time in years, he does not know what he will do at dawn.