Rustavo's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Rustavo laid out sixteen empty crystals on the tree stump and knew he had no idea where to send them. Each crystal could cage a spirit. He had carved them for years, waiting for the one prize that mattered. The trickster spirit had taught him mortal-magic long ago, then vanished, laughing. Rustavo wanted it trapped inside glass, screaming. But you cannot hunt a thing that leaves no trail. The trickster had gone to ground somewhere in the spirit realms, and every path Rustavo tried had dead-ended for a full year. He swept the crystals into his coat and looked up at the trees. Their leaves burned in four seasons at once, green and gold and red and white on the same branch. Strange fruit hung heavy, each one glowing a different color. He had come to this grove because spirits gathered near it. He had hoped one might slip and speak. None had. Then the light around him bent. The colors of the fruit smeared sideways. A shape drifted down between the trees, a floating figure wrapped in a starlit cloak, its head a smooth globe full of tiny lights. Rustavo knew it at once, though its shape had changed since the last time. Vesper Callinlit. The ghost messenger the trickster had chained to this world. "You look tired, crystal-carver," Vesper said. The voice came from everywhere and nowhere. "You owe me a debt," Rustavo said. He did not soften it. He had pulled Vesper out of a binding-circle two winters back, and both of them remembered. "I'm calling it in. Scout the spirit realms. Find where the trickster hides." The globe-head tilted. The lights inside it swirled. "I could refuse." "You won't. You hate the trickster more than I do. It's the reason you can't go home." Vesper was quiet a long moment. Then the cloak rippled, and the figure thinned until Rustavo could see the trees through it. "I will look," Vesper said. "Wait here. Touch nothing that grows." It vanished. Rustavo sat against the stump and counted his own breaths. He counted three hundred before the air turned cold. Vesper returned darker than before, its lights dimmed to embers. "I found no lair," it said. "The trickster hides too deep for me. But it does not hide alone." "Meaning what?" "It keeps a servant. A fox made of shadow, with a grin like its master. The fox runs between the realms carrying the trickster's errands. It was in this grove a night ago. It will return." Vesper drifted back. "Follow the fox, and it will lead you to the door you cannot find. But the fox will know you are hunting. It always knows." The debt was paid. Vesper faded into the shifting light and was gone. Rustavo stood and slid one crystal into his palm. He no longer needed to find the trickster. He needed to catch a fox that wanted to be caught, and follow it into the dark.