Sterling Forge's Arc

Chapter 23 of 31

Sterling set the blade on the grass. The steel was still warm. He looked up at the pale patch on the tree where the light would not fill back in. "What does it want?" he said. Sage did not answer right away. She walked to the trunk and put one bare foot against a root. The chipmunk on Linny's wrist went very still. "A dream for a dream," Sage said. "That is the trade. One of you carries something out. One of you leaves something behind." Linny's hand slid off his wrist. "The sword," she said. "No." Sterling did not look at her. He looked at Sage. "There has to be another price. Coin. Labor. Blood." "There isn't." Sage's voice was kind and it did not move. "The tree does not take metal. It takes what you came for." Sterling's throat worked. He picked up the blade. It sat in his palm the way he had wanted a blade to sit for ten years. "Then I'll leave it," he said. "Forge." Linny stepped in front of him. Her eyes were wet already. "No." "You crossed a river for this place. You froze for it. I came to help you get here." She turned from him and walked to where her open pack lay in the soft grass. She knelt. She lifted out the small board she had been painting on since they entered the cavern. The tree was on it, half finished, the colored streams caught mid-rise. She held it against her chest for a long moment. Her shoulders shook once. "Linny," he said. "Don't." She set the painting down on the grass, face up, and stepped back from it. She did not look at it again. "Keep the sword. You worked for it. You almost died for it." "So did you." "For something else." She wiped her face with the back of her hand. "I've been chasing this since I was twelve. I'm allowed to put it down." Sage watched the painting. She did not touch it. She did not need to. A seam of light opened in the cavern wall behind the tree. Not a door they had missed. A door that had not been there. Cold air pushed through it and stirred the grass flat. Linny shouldered her pack. She kissed Sterling once, quick, on the corner of the mouth. "Bring it home," she said. "Use it for something." She walked through the seam without looking back. Sterling stood alone in the grass. The chipmunk had gone with her. The tree's light kept climbing, indifferent. He looked down at the blade in his hand. It was still warm.