Raven Mortimer's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Raven Mortimer wanted to be crowned queen of the shadow revel, and she had never once found where it met. Every blood moon, the dead things beneath Terabithia gathered to dance and drink, and every blood moon she stood above the wrong patch of earth, waiting for a door that did not open. Tonight the moon would rise red again. She had one day to find the gathering, or lose another month to the dark. She knelt in the wet graveyard soil and dug with her hands. Her skirt soaked through. Fishnets tore at the knees. She had scratched at three graves already, sure a stair hid beneath one. She found only roots and beetles. The moon climbed. Her chances shrank. "You'll break your nails before you break the ground," said a small voice. Raven turned. A short figure stood at the edge of the plots, wrapped in a torn green cloak, a bone talisman at her chest. Morrigan Ashvale tended these graves. Raven had passed her a hundred times and never spoken. The grave-tender knew every root and secret in this earth, and Raven had been too proud to ask. "You know where it gathers," Raven said. It was not a question. Morrigan crouched beside the hole Raven had made. She patted the loose dirt flat, gentle, like tucking in a child. "I know where the dead go to dance. I've swept their steps clean for years." She looked up, yellow eyes steady. "You've been digging in the wrong yard your whole life." Raven's throat went tight. "Show me. I'll pay whatever you ask." Morrigan tilted her head. "The revel doesn't answer to gold. It answers to the tender of its ground." She stood and brushed her hands. "But you dug tonight. You bled for it. That earns a look." She led Raven past the far wall, to a flat stone Raven had walked over a dozen times. Morrigan pressed her palm to a carved mark. The stone sank. A stair opened, breathing out cold air and the smell of old wax. Below, far below, Raven heard music. Faint drums. Bells. Voices that did not breathe. Raven gripped the stone's edge. "That's it. That's really it." "That's really it," Morrigan agreed. Then she stepped in front of the stair. "But you don't walk in and take a crown, girl. The revel already has a queen. It has had one for a hundred years." She met Raven's eyes without blinking. "And she keeps it by feeding the dance the ones who come uninvited." The drums below grew louder. Something on the stair had heard them. Raven stared down into the dark she had wanted her whole life, and understood, at last, that wanting it was the easy part.