Raine Nightshade's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Three days into the forest, Raine Nightshade stopped at a stream to refill her canteen and check her pack. The crystal still pulled north against her palm. The cabin she had left behind sat two days' walk south, its strung lights and warm kettle already a memory she could not afford to keep. She pulled out the small charm board she used to ration her food. Glowing tally marks tracked what she had eaten and what remained. Two strips of dried meat. A heel of bread. Half a bag of nuts. The board's bottom row blinked low. Four days of forest still lay between her and the spot on the map. She could walk the distance hungry, but not strong. Not before the snow. She sat on a fallen log and made herself think. She had grown up on a farm at the forest's edge. Her father had shown her how to set a snare once, when she was small. She spent the afternoon building one. She cut cord from the spare line in her pack and lashed it to two forked branches she drove into the ground. She bent a sapling for tension and tied a noose at the loop. For bait she crushed the last of her nuts into a wooden cup and hung it from the trigger. Her hands shook by the end. She had eaten nothing since morning. She stepped back, checked the line, and walked a wide circle to hide her scent in the stream. She waited through the night under an oilcloth. At dawn she heard hooves. She crept back through the wet fern and stopped behind a trunk. A deer stood at her trap. Its fur was bluish silver. Its antlers were wide and white, taller than her head. It sniffed the cup, then lifted its face and looked straight at her. Raine did not move. The deer stepped over the noose, picked up the cup in its teeth, and ate the nuts without tripping the line. Then it walked into the trees and was gone. Raine sat down in the wet moss. She laughed once, the kind of laugh that comes out instead of crying. She pulled the charm board from her pack. The bottom row blinked red now. She crossed off the nuts with her thumb and watched the mark go dark. She had no bait left and no food worth saving. She folded the snare cord and put it back in her pack. Then she stood, shouldered the pack, and started walking north again. She would not stop to set another trap. She would walk while she still had the strength to walk, and she would reach the cathedral before her legs gave out, or she would not reach it at all.