Rowan Switched's Arc

Chapter 6 of 25

The slope steepened past the last fence. Rowan kept the two syllables moving in their head and the tooth pinned under their tongue. The path forked twice inside the first hundred steps. Rowan had walked the lower fields all their life, but never the hill after dark. They picked the left fork because it climbed. Within minutes the ground lied. What looked like a track ended at a wall of gorse. Rowan backed out and tried the right. That one dropped into a bog. Somewhere below and behind, a lantern moved along the ridge. Then a second. Then a third. The crowned woman's watchers were already on the hill, and they knew the paths. Rowan crouched under a thorn bush and counted the lights. Six. Spread wide, closing in a slow ring. At their pace, they would reach the crown of the hill before Rowan found the right track. Rowan pressed the bound wrist against the ground and tried to think. The old woman's ghost was gone. Selene was gone. The name in their mouth was useless if they never reached the meeting place to speak it. A small light flared to Rowan's left, low to the ground. Not a lantern. Green, cold, held in a cupped hand. Five figures stepped from behind a leaning stone. Fairy folk, none taller than Rowan's knee, with wings like torn glass and eyes too large for their faces. At the front stood one Rowan already knew by voice from the ghost's warning. Thorn Nightwhisper. Antlers on her brow. A green lamp swinging from her fingers. "You picked the wrong fork twice," Thorn said. "The watchers picked correctly six times. Do the arithmetic." "You told the old woman to warn me," Rowan said. "Why help now." "I gave honest counsel then. I give honest counsel now. The crowned one owes me a debt older than your deed. If you reach her, I collect. If you die on this hill, I do not." Thorn tilted the lamp toward a break in the gorse Rowan had not seen. "Follow the green. Do not look at the pool we pass. Do not drink. Do not kneel." Rowan followed. The little tribe moved fast and low, cutting a line the lanterns could not match. They passed a stone basin brimming with still water. The moon sat inside it, though the sky above was cloud. Rowan felt their name pull toward the surface like a hooked fish. They kept their eyes on Thorn's lamp and did not slow. Behind them a watcher shouted. A second shout answered from the wrong side of the ridge, then a third from further off. The ring was breaking. Thorn stopped at a hollow tree split open like a wound. "The meeting place is through here. She is already inside. Speak her name at the threshold, not after. And Rowan." Thorn's black eyes fixed on them. "When you take the deed, my debt comes next."