Riley Sane's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Riley Sane wanted the spirit-horse, and she had no idea where to look for it. Old stories said its rider learned a lost school of magic. She had believed those stories since she was small. Now she stood in her cottage doorway, boots laced, saddle rope coiled over her shoulder, and nowhere to go. A search needs a direction. She had none. She spread her mother's map across the floor and knelt over it. She marked every meadow where wild horses grazed. She marked the river fords and the high passes. None of it told her where a spirit walked. The map showed land, not magic. She pressed her palms flat and stared until the ink blurred. A cold weight brushed her ankle. She looked down and stopped breathing. Two cats stood on the map. She could see the floorboards through them. Their bodies glowed soft and pale, like breath on a winter window. One had green eyes, the other yellow. They had not come through the door. They had simply arrived, the way a dream arrives. Riley did not move. She had wanted magic her whole life. Now it sat on her mother's map, watching her with steady eyes. The green-eyed cat lifted a paw and set it down on a spot near the mountains. Then it looked at her, as if waiting. "You know where it is," she whispered. The yellow-eyed cat turned and walked toward the door. It passed through the wood and vanished. The green-eyed cat lingered. It looked back at her once, then followed the first, fading through the wall. Riley scrambled up. She grabbed the map, tore her cloak from its hook, and ran outside. The two cats waited at the edge of the yard, glowing faintly in the daylight. When she stepped toward them, they moved. They flowed over the grass toward the far hills, quick and silent, never quite touching the ground. She ran to keep them in sight. They led her past the last fences, past the grazing meadows she had marked. Every time she slowed, they slowed. Every time she stopped to breathe, they waited. They were leading her somewhere. By dusk they halted at the mouth of a narrow valley she had never entered. The cats sat side by side and would go no farther. Ahead, the grass was flattened in a wide, sweeping path, as though something huge had passed through hours before. Riley knelt and touched the crushed stems. They were still warm. She finally had her lead. But the valley climbed into unmarked mountains, the light was dying, and the trail was fresh. The spirit-horse was close, and now she had to follow it alone.