Prince charming's Arc

Chapter 10 of 30

On the third morning of the princess's stay, Prince Charming walked the honey paths and found them empty. No fox in the ferns. No badger tracks at the cloth strips. The near woods knew him now, but the deep woods still held creatures he had never seen. Without them, his claim as keeper of the forest was only half true. He went back to the house and told Princess Elara Rosemary he needed to go farther in than before, past the second stream, where the trees grew close and the light thinned. She said she would keep the near paths and refill the birdbath. He took a pouch of honey cloth, the black scale at his chest, and started before the sun cleared the ridge. He walked until the moss changed color and the birdsong stopped. He tied honey strips to low branches and knelt in the leaf mold to wait. Nothing came. He moved deeper and tried again. Still nothing. At the third stop he heard wings and looked up. A flock of the jewel birds had followed him in, their diamond feathers throwing small lights across the trunks. They landed on the branches above his cloth strips. Then, from the ferns, a lynx stepped out. Behind it, a boar. Behind the boar, a stag with a broken antler. They had come for the birds, not for him, but the birds had come for the scale at his chest. He held still. The lynx sniffed the honey strip and did not run. The boar ate from the ground at his boot. The stag lowered its head and drank from a puddle three paces from his hand. He counted seven creatures he had never seen before. He did not move until they left on their own. He came out of the deep woods at dusk with an empty pouch and mud to his knees. The dragon lay in the field where it had lain each evening, its horned head turned toward the treeline, watching him walk out. Princess Elara Rosemary stood at the birdbath with a cloth in her hand. He told her the deep creatures had come. He told her the jewel birds had brought them, drawn by the scale. She looked at the dragon and said the dragon had sent the birds in after him. He had not thought of that. He set his hand on the warm stone rim of the basin and understood that the forest was one thing now, from the sparrow in the near hedge to the dragon on the mountain, held together by couriers he had not built alone. Only the mountain itself remained between him and a full claim.