Pippin's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Pippin ran low through the ferns, and she knew the hunters had found her tracks. She was a fox, and foxes like her were hunted now across the kingdom. She had a dream that kept her running: a hidden refuge where outcasts like her could live without hiding their faces. But dreams do not save you when a tracker reads your every pawprint. She stopped at a stream, chest heaving, and saw the mud held her claws in plain sight. She crossed the water to break her scent. It would not be enough. The man leading the hunters was Valarious Thorne, an ex-ranger who now took bounties for the crown. She had never met him, but she had seen his work. Three nights ago he had picked her trail from wet leaves in the dark. He did not hurry. He did not lose a trail. Running in the open only fed him. So Pippin stopped running blind. She needed to see him before he saw her. High above, a raven circled the ridge, watching the same open ground. She had heard of beast tamers who bound wild creatures with patience and food. She had nothing but a strip of dried meat and steady hands. She knelt in the reeds and held the meat out flat. The raven landed six feet away and studied her with one bright eye. She did not grab. She waited. It hopped closer, took the meat, and did not fly. She whispered to it, low and calm, the way she had seen a tamer do at a market long ago. By dusk it perched on her wrist and did not leave. The raven rose at her word. It climbed and circled the ridge, then dropped fast to her shoulder. She read its alarm in the flare of its wings. Thorne was close, moving up the far slope, reading her crossing at the stream. The bird had bought her the one thing she lacked: a warning from above. But a warning was not escape. Her claws still cut the mud. Her red coat still burned bright against the gray rocks. Pippin needed to vanish, not just to see. She remembered a trader's tale of a cloak that swallowed light and left no shape for watchers on high ridges. If such a thing existed, it would hide her from Thorne's eyes and let her lead him nowhere. Finding it became her new goal, sharp and certain. She turned away from every open path. The raven settled against her neck, warm and watchful. Thorne would reach the stream by morning and find her scent gone cold. Pippin walked into the dense pines, no longer prey in the open, hunting now for the one cloak that could keep her secret. Her refuge could not be built by a fox who left tracks. First she would learn to disappear.