Oswin Merrick's Arc

Chapter 3 of 9

The trail dropped fast below the amber fern. Fog filled the hollow like still water. Oswin's boots sank in cold mud. The parrot rode his shoulder, quiet now, and the armored beetle plodded behind. No birdsong. No wind. Travelers walked down here and never climbed back out. He didn't know why. If he couldn't learn the reason, it would take him too. He saw the first sign at the bottom. A pack lay half-sunk in the muck. Then another, and a walking stick, and a boot with no owner. He crouched and touched the mud. It shivered under his hand, like something below was breathing. The beetle stopped. It would not step forward. Oswin pushed its shell. It dug its legs in and refused, the way it had braced against the flood. The creature knew. The ground itself was the trap. Oswin picked up a stone and tossed it ahead. The mud swallowed it without a splash. Slow bog, thick as tar. A man who walked across would stand still one breath too long, then sink. The lost travelers hadn't been taken by a beast. They'd been taken by the ground while they searched for the danger somewhere else. A voice came out of the fog. "You've stopped moving. Good. The ones who keep walking are the ones I stop hearing." Oswin turned. An old man sat on a dry root at the hollow's edge, a leaf-tangled beard down his chest, a peeled stick across his knees. His eyes were pale and fixed on nothing. Aldric Rootwhisper. The blind hermit who had shown Oswin how to align his eleven map scraps to true north. Oswin had not expected to find him this deep. "You followed me," Oswin said. "I followed the noise you make." Aldric tapped his stick on the firm root under him. "The bog can't hold what won't stand still on it. Cross on the roots. They run under the mud in a ring. I've walked them forty years." Oswin crawled to the root and pressed it. Solid. He looked out and saw the pattern now — dark ridges just under the surface, curling toward the far slope. He'd have missed them alone. He'd have sunk like the boot and the pack. "Feet on the roots," Aldric said. "Never the mud. Send the beetle first. It weighs true." Oswin coaxed the beetle onto the ridge. It stepped where he pointed, plate by plate, and did not sink. He followed, hands on its shell, the parrot tight on his shoulder. Root to root, they crossed the hollow that had swallowed everyone before them. He climbed onto the far slope and looked back. The fog held its secret still, but he had the way through it now. He turned to thank Aldric. The old man was gone. The path went on, up, out of the hollow. Somewhere ahead lay the relic. And he had no map left to find it.