Petra Voss's Arc

Chapter 1 of 4

One empty box sat on Petra Voss's highest shelf, and it had waited three long years. Every other box in her cluttered shop held something cursed and locked away. But the last box stayed open, hungry for the relic she could never find. Petra climbed her ladder each morning to check it. Each morning it stared back, empty, and a little more dangerous for staying that way. She was a hunched old woman in a moth-eaten shawl, and she knew what an empty trap did. It waited. And waiting things grew teeth. Tonight she pulled a bundle from the deepest drawer. Reeds and small bones wrapped an old sheet of paper. She cut the reeds and spread the sheet flat on her counter. Coded marks crawled across it in faded ink. She had puzzled at these marks for years and read only fragments. The paper named a resting place, but never the way there. A moth landed on the counter beside her hand. Its wings were ink-black, edged with faint blue. Petra went still. She had seen this moth before, always near the boxes that hummed loudest. It walked across the coded sheet. Then it lifted and drifted toward the door. "You know something I don't," Petra said. She grabbed her lantern and followed. The moth led her out into the wet dark, past the porch, into reeds that soaked her hem. She was too old for this and did not slow. The moth flickered ahead, patient, waiting each time she fell behind. Water pulled at her boots. Frogs went quiet as she passed. The moth stopped above a low mound of mud and roots. Petra knelt. Her fingers dug through cold muck until they struck something hard and slick. She pulled it free. A snapping turtle, shell soaked black, dripping bayou water. It hissed and snapped at the air. Petra almost dropped it. Then she felt the shell. A seam ran under the mud, too straight for any animal. The relic was not near the turtle. The relic was inside it, sealed in a living shell, hidden where no thief would ever dig. She carried the snapping thing back through the reeds, both arms shaking. She set it on her counter. It thrashed and gouged the wood. The moth settled on the empty box above, wings open, and Petra understood the moth had done its work. But she could not open the box yet. She could not open the turtle either. Prying the seam would break the shell and free whatever slept inside. She had found the relic. Now it snapped and hissed on her counter, awake, alive, and refusing to be sealed. The last box was no longer empty of purpose. It was empty of a captive she did not yet know how to catch.