Siltwhisper's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

By first light, Siltwhisper left Jasper sleeping and slipped out to read the ground. The shack sat quiet. The water did not. He moved along the bank, eye low, looking for what the night had left behind. At the treeline he stopped. Two bare footprints pressed deep into the mud, toes splayed, heel sunk heavy. Not Jasper's boots. Not his own. The prints faced the shack and did not leave. He crouched and traced the edge with one finger. Fresh. Made after the rain stopped. Someone had stood here and watched the door, then stepped back into the reeds without a second set of tracks coming out. That meant they had gone the long way around. That meant they knew to. He followed the line of sight backward and found the old broken stonework rising from the mire — a half-wall, a shadowed gap, mud-soft at the base. A clean vantage on his shack. He climbed inside the gap. On a flat stone lay a folded cloth, weather-stained, edges torn. He opened it. A winding path was marked in dotted ink, ending at his door. He went back fast. Jasper was awake, pale, sitting up against the wall. Siltwhisper laid the cloth on the floor between them. "You carried this." Jasper looked at it a long moment. "I dropped it two nights back. In the reeds. I thought the water took it." He did not look away. "It didn't." Siltwhisper rolled the cloth tight and pushed it into the stove. He bolted the door. The watcher knew the shack now. The shack was finished. "We move tonight," he said. "Not the people. Us." Jasper nodded once. Outside, the reeds bent in a wind that wasn't there.