Raine Nightshade's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Raine Nightshade had three weeks before the first snow, and no walls of her own to stand behind. She crouched on the porch of a rented cabin at the edge of the woods, counting coins onto the boards. The cabin was warm and small, with strung lights along the eaves and a kettle still ticking inside. She had paid through the end of the month. After that, the owner wanted it back for his daughter. Raine was a gothic elf with cut-up hands and a plan no one else believed in: somewhere in this country sat an abandoned cathedral the diocese had let rot after a fire, and she meant to buy it, fix it, and live in it. She had been chasing the rumor for a year. She did not yet know where it was. She had lost a woman once by paying attention to the wrong things. After that she stopped expecting people to stay. A building, she had decided, would not leave. But a building you cannot find is no better than one that walks away. Inside, she spread her papers on the table. A folded map sat on top, bought from an old bookseller two towns back. The title across the scroll read Map to the Cathedral in faded ink. The roads were drawn in dashes, the villages in tiny painted roofs, and at the center stood a spired church with no name beside it. The bookseller had sworn the map was honest. He had not been able to tell her which forest the spire stood in. Raine had stared at it every night for a week. The dashed roads led nowhere she could match to a real town. A tap at the window made her look up. A small creature clung to the glass, purple wings folded, a long tail curled against the pane. It watched her with one bright eye, then dropped to the porch and walked to the doormat. Something lay there that had not been there an hour ago. Raine opened the door. On the boards sat a crystal the length of her hand, set in a carved stone base. The crystal glowed from inside, pale blue shifting to rose. The base was cut with runes she half knew. When she lifted it, the light inside the crystal pulled toward the north like a needle. She turned the stone in her hands. The light kept its direction. She brought it to the table and held it over the map. The glow steadied above a patch of forest the dashed roads skirted but never entered. Raine marked the spot in pencil. She folded the map, wrapped the crystal in a shirt, and began packing the cabin by lamplight. She did not know who had left the stone on her porch. She did not know what waited at the end of the line it drew. She knew she had a direction now, and less than three weeks to reach it before the snow.