Rowan Pinwell's Arc

Chapter 5 of 8

Rowan left the square with the scrap in their coat and no idea where to go next. Two confessions were still out there. The thief had a head start and now knew Rowan would lie in public to protect a name. Every minute Rowan stood still was a minute the thief moved. Rowan pressed a hand to their forehead, felt one twig antler scrape their knuckle, and forced themself to think. The wind that morning had come from the north. Three scraps had landed south and east. The remaining two had to have gone somewhere the wind carried them, past the square, into ground Rowan had not yet walked. Rowan went home first, only long enough to grab the leather journal from the shelf by the window. Inside, pressed between the pages, were dried moss leaves collected from every path around town over the years. Rowan had written notes beside each one. Which path. Which season. Which way the wind cut through. Rowan flipped past the square, past the hedge, and found the page for the north road. The moss there grew on the west side of the posts. That meant wind funneled east through the broken fence line at the edge of town. Anything caught in that current would end up in one place: the low ground past the fallen tree. Rowan ran. The road narrowed and the houses thinned. Rowan passed the moss-furred posts of the old path marker, its planks scattered in the grass, and cut off the road into the trees. The fallen tree lay ahead, roots up, hollow trunk yawning at one end. Rowan slowed. A scrap of paper was pinned against the roots, held by nothing but the shape of the wood. Rowan pulled it free. The baker's handwriting. One confession, whole. Rowan turned in a slow circle, scanning the moss and the leaves and the hollow. No second scrap. Rowan crouched at the mouth of the hollow trunk and looked inside. Empty. But the moss at the lip was scuffed. A fresh mark. Someone had reached in before Rowan and taken what was there. Rowan sat back on their heels. One scrap saved. One scrap gone, and now in a hand Rowan could not see. The thief had been here, maybe an hour ago, maybe less. Rowan folded the recovered scrap into their coat with the other and stood. The journal had brought Rowan to the right place. It had also brought Rowan one step too late. Whatever the last confession said, the thief was reading it now, or would be soon, and Rowan no longer had the wind to follow. Rowan turned back toward town. The next move would have to come from what the thief did next.