PoppaBeru's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

PoppaBeru had promised their mothers he would bring all three children home from the Dewdoo swamp before it changed them. He was a grey-haired druid who knew the fastest ways to fail such a promise, and the fastest was named Brynleigh. She was five, quick as a snapped twig, and she had already vanished into the murk twice this morning. "Stay where I can see you," he called. Mud sucked at his boots. Grey fog hung low over the black water. Somewhere ahead, Brynleigh laughed. He counted heads the way a shepherd counts wolves. Lincoln stood close, eight years old, fixing his glasses with one thumb. The boy gripped his little wooden shield like it might float away. "She went that way, PoppaBeru," Lincoln said, pointing. "Behind the reeds. I told her not to." A silver glint winked between two dead trees. Brynleigh darted for it. PoppaBeru lunged, missed her sleeve by an inch, and caught only cold air. She grabbed a shiny coin off a floating log and grinned. "Look what I found!" she said. "You're too slow, old man." He could not watch three children and chase one who moved like a fish. Every time he turned to steady Lincoln or the other, Brynleigh slipped off into the fog. One wrong step in this swamp and she would be gone. Fear tightened his chest. He needed to bind her to someone before she found something worse than a coin. He remembered the belt in his pack. He had traded three healing roots for it in a border town, thinking it a toy. Now he dug it out with shaking hands. It was thick brown leather, marked with old runes, and a glowing number sat at its center: 67. The seller had sworn it would howl when two who wore it drifted too far apart. "Lincoln," PoppaBeru said, kneeling. "I need you to hold onto your sister. Not with your hands. With this." Lincoln's face went pale. "She never listens to me." "She doesn't have to. The belt will." He looped the leather around both children, cinching Lincoln to Brynleigh. The runes flared. The number pulsed brighter. Brynleigh squirmed and yanked, testing it. "This is dumb," she said, and bolted for another glint in the water. The belt loosed a sound like a dragon waking. It beeped, then roared, an eerie howl that rolled across the swamp. Lincoln stumbled forward, dragged after her by the leather. Brynleigh froze at the noise. She turned and saw her brother yanked along behind her, wide-eyed, digging in his heels. The howl died the moment they stood close again. Brynleigh scowled. Lincoln, red-faced, planted himself firm. "You bolt, I come too," he said. "So quit bolting." PoppaBeru let out a slow breath. Two children, tethered, one anchor to hold the other. He almost smiled. But the dragon-howl had carried far across the water, and now something in the deep fog had gone very quiet, and it was listening.