Raina's Arc

Chapter 4 of 4

The wolf led them off the ridge before dawn. Roach's warmth still filled Raina, but it thinned by the hour. She felt it slipping like water through her fingers. Her willow blade dragged at her hand, always pulling north toward the poison's root. Each mile spent more than she had. "Roach can't feed me forever," she said. "I need my own well filled, or I stop before the cairn." The wolf's antlered head turned. It broke into a trot, and they followed. The trees changed. Dark bark, branches twisted like old rope. Purple and deep red leaves hung heavy over the snow. White blooms shaped like stars dotted every crown. As Raina watched, one bloom loosed and drifted down. It fell slow, glowing faint, then melted into the ground where it landed. She knelt and pressed her hand to the earth. Warmth answered her palm. Not Roach's borrowed heat. Something older. Her drained magic stirred and began to fill. "They fall like stars," Taurus said. He stood over her, pack still on his back. His forearms glowed blue and would not stop. "This forest is close to the god. I can feel it in my arms. They won't quiet here." He watched the blooms drop around them and did not reach for one. "You take what you need. I'll keep watch." Raina cupped her hands and caught a falling bloom before it struck the snow. It dissolved into her skin. Heat ran up her arms and filled the empty places the tracing had scraped bare. Her thinned magic grew whole. The gray left her face. She caught another, and another, drinking the forest's gift until her hands stopped shaking. Taurus crouched beside her. "Why keep walking?" he asked. "You could turn south. Cleanse trees. Live long." It was not a challenge. It was a trade question, laid bare. "The mark on my face is his," Raina said. She touched the blue woad on her cheek. "The god's. He sleeps, and the poison grows from under him. If I wake him, the root dies at its source." She looked at the star trees, at the wolf that had led her this far. "That's what keeps me north. Not the trees. Him." Taurus nodded once. "Then I keep my hands ready. You keep your promise. Teach me to hold them." He held out one glowing fist. Raina wrapped her fingers around it. The blue dimmed under her touch, just a little. He grunted, surprised. Her magic was full now, fuller than the lake had left her. She could reach the cairn and beyond it. She rose and gripped the willow blade. It pulled north, sharp and sure. But the wolf did not move toward the cairn. It faced deeper into the star forest, ears flat, a low growl in its chest. Something ahead had caught its notice. Raina followed its stare and saw the trees thicken into dark, and the falling blooms stop.