Raven Meadows's Arc

Chapter 10 of 25

Raven kept her back to the round door. Outside, the wide shape held still at the treeline. Her people slept behind wooden walls that a hard shove could break. She had huts, herbs, and a fire. She had nothing to fight with. She'd pulled the threat here, and now she had to keep it out. Finn came from the cottage doorway, nose twitching. He crossed the mud fast and stopped beside her. He breathed in slow, the way he did when he tracked. His blue eyes fixed on the trees. "Bear-shape," he said. "Bigger. Burnt smell on it." He swallowed. "It's hunting. Not scared." Raven's hands went cold. "How long before it moves?" "Soon." Finn's sentences shrank. "I've smelled things like this. Before the pack." He stopped. Torryn stepped out of his hut. He held Captain Fluffington under one arm, the bear's ears stitched crooked. He set the bear down on a dry log, careful, then looked at the treeline the way you'd look at a wall you meant to knock down. "I can burn it out," he said. "You'll burn the reeds too," Raven said. "And the huts. And the people waiting in them." "Then I won't aim at the huts." He rolled his shoulders. His scales caught the gray light. "I aim at the trees. It runs or it burns." Raven looked at the queue past the reeds. Strangers crouched there, watching, waiting for shelter she hadn't finished. If the fire spread, she'd trade one danger for a worse one. "Wait," she said. She'd seen Torryn dry wet wood without catching it. Controlled flame. Aimed flame. "Can you make a line? A wall of it. Between us and the trees, not on them." Torryn thought. "The ground's wet. Fire won't crawl on wet ground." A pause. "It'll hold a while." "Then hold it." Torryn walked to the middle of the muddy stretch. He breathed in. When he let go, flame poured out low and straight along the wet earth. It caught nothing but stood there, a bright fence between the haven and the dark trees. The heat pushed Raven back a step. The wide shape shifted. It rose. For a moment its shoulders filled the gap in the trees. Then it turned. Branches cracked. It went back into the woods and did not come out. Finn breathed the air again. "Gone," he said. "Really gone." Torryn let the flame die. Steam hissed off the mud. He picked up his bear and tucked it away. Raven's legs shook. She sat down on the wet log. Her people were safe. The threat was driven off. But the fire had lit the whole marsh for miles. Every hidden thing out there had seen exactly where her haven was. She'd shown them she could protect it. She'd also shown them where to come. By morning, the queue at the reeds would be twice as long.