Sable Ashwick's Arc

Chapter 2 of 9

The wind that took Sable east turned on her within the hour. The storm belt swallowed the last clear light. Rain hit her goggles sideways. The glider bucked under her ribs and the left wingtip shuddered in a way she had never felt on any test flight above Mosswood. She pulled the control bar close and tried to angle down out of the worst gusts. A crosswind slammed her sideways. Her stomach lifted. One of the rib struts cracked with a sound she felt in her teeth. She was losing the sky. Below her, through a tear in the cloud, she saw color. Tall mushroom trees pushed up out of the mist, their broad caps glowing with small points of light. A grove. Shelter. She aimed for it the only way she could, by dropping. She cut the tension on the right wing and let the glider spiral. Branches raked her legs. A cap the size of a wagon wheel took the brunt and folded under her. She hit stem, then moss, then ground. The glider crumpled around her like a broken umbrella. Sable lay still. She counted her fingers. She counted her ribs. Nothing gone. The rain barely reached the forest floor here. The stems above her caught the storm and shook it off in fine drops. Sparks of light drifted down through the caps. Something small landed on the broken wingtip. Sable froze. A fairy stood on the strut. Dark green braid over one shoulder. White wings folded flat against the wet. She was no taller than Sable's forearm and looked, at first glance, like a child. Her eyes said otherwise. They moved over the glider like a mechanic pricing a wreck. "Your left rib is snapped," the fairy said. "Two spars. You will not fly out on that." Sable pushed up on her elbows. "I have to." "You don't." "There are people behind me. A day, maybe less." The fairy's wings twitched once. She looked east, into the dark of the storm, then back at Sable. "I am Sylvara Greenweave. Someone stole a seed cache from the Deepwood. The thief went east through this storm. I need to catch him before sundown." She stepped off the strut and hovered level with Sable's face. "You need a wing. I need eyes above the cloud. Fix the glider. Carry me. I will show you a pass through the worst of the wind." Sable looked at the snapped rib. She looked at the small sharp face in front of her. Behind her, a day. Ahead of her, her father's wreck. "Deal," she said. She dragged the glider under the nearest wide cap and started stripping stem fiber for splints. The storm kept howling above the grove. Sable was on the ground, in one piece, with a partner she had not planned on and a route she did not yet know.