Oswin Merrick's Arc

Chapter 1 of 9

Oswin Merrick spread eleven map scraps across the hermit's dirt floor and none of them fit together. Each scrap held a piece of the hidden path he'd chased for years, the path that led to the lost relic he swore lived deep in Beetlegrove. He'd drawn every scrap himself, in the dark, from memory. Now the pieces mocked him. A river on one ended nowhere. A ridge on another pointed at empty edge. Without a way to line them up, the path stayed buried, and so did the relic. "You're breathing too fast," said the old man by the fire. Aldric Rootwhisper never opened his clouded eyes, yet he always knew where Oswin stood. The blind hermit had lived in these trees longer than anyone. People swore he could hear a lie. Oswin had climbed half a day to reach him, because no one else in Beetlegrove believed the path existed at all. "They don't connect," Oswin said. He shoved two scraps together. "I drew them right. I know I did." Aldric held out a knotted hand. "Give me one." Oswin passed him a scrap. The hermit didn't look. He pressed his thumb across the ink, feeling the lines like a face. His scraggly parrot shifted on the rafter and watched with its one good eye. "You drew these facing whatever way you were pointed," Aldric said. "Each one has its own north. That's why they fight." He tapped the paper. "You need a fixed north. One true direction to turn them all to." Oswin's stomach dropped. He carried such a thing. From his jacket he pulled the brass compass his father had left him, its engraved face worn smooth by his thumb. He'd used it to walk, never to draw. He set it on the floor and let the needle settle. Then he understood. He turned the first scrap until its little drawn north matched the needle. He did the second. The river met the river. He kept going, turning each scrap to the same true north, and the ridges climbed into one ridge, the streams poured into one stream. Eleven scraps. One map. The hidden path ran clean across all of them, past a landmark he'd sketched but never reached: a towering fern glowing amber, tall as three men, marking where the path bent down into the deep wood. "There," Oswin breathed. His hand shook. "It's real. It was always real." Aldric didn't smile. He turned his blind face toward the joined map, then toward the dark beyond his door. "That fern grows in the sunken hollow," he said. "Past it, the ground drinks men. Nobody who walks in that low place walks back out the way they came." The parrot screeched once. Oswin folded the assembled map into his jacket. He finally had his direction. Now the direction led somewhere that ate people, and he was going anyway.