Sable Ashwick's Arc

Chapter 3 of 9

Sable worked under the wide cap while the storm kept beating the tops of the grove. She had splinted one spar and was lashing the second when the falcon dropped through the mist and landed on the broken strut. Her father's bird. Red as a coal, wings edged with orange like fire caught mid-flap. She had let him fly free above the storm belt, sure he would find her. He shook rain off his back and screamed once, low in his throat. Sable stopped tying. He only made that sound when something was coming. Sylvara Greenweave lifted from the moss and hovered by the falcon. "How far?" The falcon turned his head toward the dark between the stems. Sable stood and listened. Something heavy was moving through the grove. Not fast. Steady. A cap thumped to the ground somewhere behind her as a body pushed past its stem. Then another, closer. "I need more time," Sable said. "One spar isn't lashed." "You don't have it," the fairy said. "Whatever that is, it followed the crash." Sable looked at the glider. One good spar. One half-tied. She could not fly it. She could not outrun what was coming on foot either. She had a knife, a coil of stem fiber, and a bird who hunted rabbits. She made the choice fast. "Draw it off the wing. I finish the lash. We launch together or not at all." Sylvara's wings snapped open. "How." Sable pointed at the falcon. "He'll go with you. Noise. Light. Anything. Give me sixty counts." The fairy did not argue. She shot up between the caps, and the falcon lifted after her, wings cracking hard against the wet air. A moment later Sable heard the bird scream again, farther off, and then the crash of something big turning to follow. She counted. She worked. Her hands shook and she made them stop. She wound the fiber twice around the spar, pulled it tight with her teeth, tied it off. Thirty. She dragged the glider clear of the cap by its nose. Forty. She pulled the wings taut and checked the rib. It held. Fifty. The crash came back. Closer this time. Behind her, low, a wet snuffling breath. Sable did not turn. She threw herself under the bar, ran three steps down the slope of moss, and pushed off into the gap between two stems. The glider dropped, caught, lifted. A branch tore her sleeve. The wingtip cleared a cap by a hand's width. Sylvara dropped onto her shoulder as the glider climbed. The falcon fell in beside them, one long wingbeat, then another. Below, something roared in the grove they had left. Sable did not look back. The storm belt was still ahead. Her father's wreck was still ahead. But she was in the air again, and the thing in the grove was behind her, and the fairy on her shoulder was already pointing east.