Sova's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

The crack in the sky above the koi pond had grown a finger wider since dawn. Sova hovered close to it, small and round and white, gold filigree catching the light where light still behaved. The rose gemstone on its chest pulsed a slow, tired pink. Not dark. Not yet. Sova pressed one wingtip to the edge of the split and pushed a thread of boundary magic into the wound. The thread held for three breaths, then frayed. Sova was older than the trees below it, and it had mended this seam alone for a long time. Tonight, alone was not enough. Sova needed a second pair of hands. Someone who could feel the seam the way Sova felt it. The block party universe was full of people, but boundary magic was a narrow craft. Sova had never trained anyone. It had never needed to. It flew low over the water and found her at the reef edge below the pond's overflow — the mermaid with the oil-slick tail, dragging herself along grey coral. Petra. Sova had watched her before. She kept coming back to sick water. That was a kind of stubbornness Sova recognized. "Petra." She looked up. Her hair floated dark around her face. "You're the owl." "There is a crack in the sky. I cannot close it by myself." Sova hovered lower. "You feel edges. I have watched you touch the dead coral and know exactly where it stopped being alive. That is the same sense." Petra rested her hand on the grey brain coral. "I can't leave the reef." "The thing behind the crack eats reefs too. Eventually." She was quiet. Then: "Show me." Sova led her up through the overflow to the pond's surface. The split hung in the air above them, light bending wrong at its lip. Sova pushed a thread of magic into the seam and held it out toward her like a rope end. "Take it. Pinch the edge where it wants to peel." Petra reached. Her fingers closed on nothing Sova could see, but her face changed. She flinched, then set her jaw. "It's slippery." "Hold it." She held. Sova drew a second thread and stitched. For the first time in a long time, the seam closed under two hands instead of one. The crack shortened by a finger's width. The gemstone on Sova's chest brightened from tired pink to clear rose. Petra let go and swayed. Blood ran from her nose in a thin dark line. She wiped it on the back of her wrist and looked at the smear like it was information. "How often," she said. "Every day. Until it holds." "I get sicker every day already." "I know." She nodded once. That was the whole answer. Sova had an apprentice now, and an apprentice who was already dying.