Rowan Birch's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Rowan Birch spread six ripped trail sketches across the flat rock and saw the problem plainly. He wanted to chart every ancient path that once linked Brightleaf into one lost map. But each fragment measured distance from a different fallen marker, and no two agreed. The stone bridge sat north on one sheet and south on another. Without one fixed starting point, every map he drew would lie about the next. He had spent three days pacing the wood for a landmark old enough to trust. He found none. Instead he found rune-carved stones, and a man reading them. Thorne Willowshade knelt at a green-veined boulder, tracing grooves with two fingers. He did not look up. "You walk like someone lost," he said. "Lost men break my quiet." "I need an origin point," Rowan said. "One marker the old trails all measured from. You read this stone. Does it name one?" Thorne stood. His leaf-cloak dripped from the morning damp. "It names the Heart Stone. Every path in this forest was walked outward from it." He studied Rowan the way a buyer studies a horse. "I trade answers for favors. Where it stands, I will tell you. But first you fetch me a serrated emerald leaf from the plant that grows only at the ravine's lip. The runes need its sap." Rowan went. The ravine dropped sharp and wet. The lush green plant clung to the crumbling edge, leaves cut like saw teeth. He gripped a root, leaned out, and stripped one leaf clean. The soil gave under his boot. He caught the root and hauled himself back, breath ragged. He carried the leaf up. A small voice stopped him. "Hold there." A baby lemur stood on the trail in overalls and cowboy boots, a rope loop spinning at his side. Deputy Ringtail. His star-marked chest came up to Rowan's knee. "You took a leaf," the deputy said. "That plant is watched. Explain." "The loremaster needs its sap," Rowan said. "For the Heart Stone runes." The deputy let the loop fall. "Heart Stone is real. I have seen it." He pointed his rope down a narrow cut. "That way. Half a mile. Big gray stone, sun carved on its face." Rowan turned to Thorne, who had followed. Thorne took the leaf and crushed it. Sap wet his fingers. He pressed them to the boulder, and fresh runes glowed pale green. "The boy speaks true," Thorne said, reading. "Heart Stone. Origin of every trail. But hear this. The stone is cracked. Half of it slid into the ravine an age ago. The distances it once held are split between two halves now." Rowan understood. He had his fixed point at last. Every map could measure from the Heart Stone. But the marker itself was broken in two, and he would have to find the fallen half before a single trail could be charted true.