Selene Moonshadow's Arc

Chapter 1 of 9

Selene Moonshadow's wand kicked in her hand for the third time, and the sting ran up to her elbow. She lowered it and shook the numbness out of her fingers. The shadow was still there, thin as spilled ink under the roots of the old oak. It had followed her since Larchgrove, the way it had followed her mother, and her mother's mother. She had come to these woods to learn its true name. Without the name, her wand could track it and light her path, but it could not bind the thing. Every witch in her line had died still hunting. She tried again. She pointed the wand and whispered the probe her grandmother had taught her. The tip flared white. The shadow flinched, then snapped back like a whip. The recoil threw her wrist sideways. A crack ran down the wand's shaft, hair-thin, warm to the touch. Selene sat down hard in the leaves. One more probe like that and the wand would split. Without it she was blind on the road, and the shadow knew it. She could feel the cold pressing at her knees, the old freeze creeping up. If it came closer, she would lock in place again. She had to stop pushing at the thing directly and figure out why it pushed back. She forced herself up and walked. Half a mile on, past a leaning fence, she found the study she had been told about. It sat crooked between two dying trees, roots crawling up its walls, yellow windows lit from inside. A witch of the older court had lived here once. The door was unlocked. Inside, the air hummed against her teeth. Books leaned in stacks. A raccoon in a small brown hat sat on the desk, chewing the corner of a ledger. It looked at her, unbothered, and went back to chewing. "I need a book on unnamed things," Selene said, mostly to herself. The raccoon hopped down and trotted to a shelf near the floor. It patted a thin volume with one black paw. Selene pulled it out. The binding was warm. She opened to a marked page and read. The passage was short. A shadow without a name is not nameless, it read. It is wearing the name of the one it hunts. Probe it and you probe yourself. The wand rejects what would burn its wielder. Selene sat down on the floor. Her wand hadn't been failing. It had been protecting her. The shadow's name was tangled with hers, or with her blood. Every probe she had sent at it for six years had been aimed, without her knowing, at her own throat. She closed the book and pressed her palm flat against the cover. The freeze in her knees eased. She had a direction now, and it was worse than the one she came in with. To learn the shadow's name, she would have to turn the wand on herself.