Scarlett Thornwood's Arc

Chapter 1 of 5

Scarlett Thornwood had walked this forest her whole life, and tonight it did not know her. Three weeks ago the moss on the north ridge died. Then blood came up through the soil. She had tracked it for three days, writing down every date, every wrong thing. She wanted to break whatever sickness had crept into these woods. But first she had to find where it started. The dogs began at dusk. She heard them howling far off, then closer, barking in long ragged chains across the dark. She pulled her red hood tight and followed the sound. The trees changed as she walked. Leaves hung heavy and red, and something dripped from them. She touched a branch. Her fingers came back wet and warm. One tall tree wept thick dark streams down its trunk, pooling at the roots like a wound that would not close. She did not touch that one. An old red dog crossed her path. Nose low, it dragged a trail through the dirt, sniffing a dark wet patch streaked with red. It whined and backed away from her. The howling rose again, and the dog bolted into the trees. Scarlett knelt. The ground was soft here, softer than it should be. She pressed her hand into the mud. It sank too easily. When she pulled back, red welled up into the hole she had made. Then more. The pool spread, filling the low ground, running between the roots. It was not soaking in. It was coming up. She stood. All around her the forest floor darkened. Blood rose from the earth in slow sheets, seeping from under leaves, from under stones, from the base of every tree. The whole hollow was flooding itself. Her boots sank in it. The howling stopped. In the new silence she heard her own breath. Yellow eyes opened in the dark ahead of her between two bleeding red trees. Then the eyes went red. A black wolf stood, its gaze glowing like two coals. It did not growl. It watched her, still as the trees, like prey. Scarlett's grandfather said this forest talked if you stayed quiet long enough. She had never believed him. She believed him now. The blood was not a stain or a spill. It was the forest bleeding, and it had been bleeding straight toward this place. She backed out of the forests center slowly, step by careful step, eyes on the wolf. It let her go. At the edge of the rising red she stopped and looked at the weeping trees, the soaked ground, the watching eyes. This was the center of the forest. Whatever had changed these woods lived here somewhere, under the soil, pushing blood up like a fever. She had found the wound. Now she had to find what made it.