Peach Bloomshade's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

They followed the footprints out of the fruit grove. Bare tracks pressed into the mud, small and slim, heading up the stream toward the falls. Peach knew the size before Timber said it. They matched her own foot. She had walked this path during a blackout she could not remember. The cord had held her still beside the fire for two days. But the tracks proved it: the cord kept her from walking away, not from acting. In a deeper blackout, her hands could still reach for Timber's throat while he slept. "The rope won't stop my hands," Peach said. "I could hurt you and never know it." Timber crouched by the water and filled a skin. "You won't." "You don't know that." "I do." He stood. "I'm harder to break than you think." Before she could argue, a low sound rolled down the stream. Not wind. Something huge, dragging itself through rot. An old elf stepped from the trees ahead, gray-bearded, a necklace of beast teeth across his chest. He held up one hand for silence. Timber knew him at once. "Theron," Timber said. "You're far from the grove." "So are you." Theron did not lower his hand. This was the hunter who cut notches to track the blight each week, the one who warned Timber to stay clear of the rise. Now he stared past them, up the stream. "There's a thing in these falls. Six legs. Eight hundred pounds. The blight made it. It killed a whole village and moved on. It's here now." The dragging sound grew louder. Water crashed somewhere above. Then the creature came around the bend, pale and swollen, roots trailing from its ribs. It fixed on Peach and charged. Timber shoved her behind him. Theron loosed an arrow into its eye. The beast screamed and swung a limb. Peach did not run. Her numb hands closed on a fallen branch. She drove the sharp end into the wound Theron had opened. The creature reared, and Timber buried his axe in its skull. It dropped into the shallows and did not rise. They stood panting in the healing water. The falls glowed behind the dead thing, the lagoon shimmering below. Peach's hands tingled where the water touched them. "You stayed," Theron said to her. "Most run." He pulled his arrow free and moved on up the stream without another word. That night they made camp beside the glowing pool. Peach watched Timber clean his axe. He had stepped in front of the beast without a pause. He had meant every word by the fire. He was harder to break than she thought. She reached across the space between them and took his hand. His fingers closed over hers, warm and steady. She did not pull away. "If my hands ever turn on you," she said, "promise you'll stop them." "I will," Timber said. "And they won't." For the first time, she believed him.