Sterling Forge's Arc

Chapter 7 of 31

The cut between the rocks opened into a shallow bowl of pines Sterling did not know. The chipmunk had led them off every path he could name. He stopped and turned a slow circle. No trail. No village smoke. The ridge behind them wore a shape he had never seen from this side. "We're off the map," he said. Linny knelt in the snow. The chipmunk climbed out of her pocket and sat on her knee. Its pink tail curled around its feet. Snow dust clung to the petal-shaped ears. "We're past the soldiers," she said. "We're past everything. I don't know which way is Snowcrest. I don't know which way is home." Sterling looked at the trees. The pines here grew taller and closer. Frost lined every branch. "If we walk wrong, we walk into a fae ring before we see it." Linny reached inside her coat. She pulled out the stolen library map, folded small, and spread it flat on her thigh. Her finger moved across it and stopped. "I know where we are." "You've never been here." "I have." She tapped a blank stretch north of the marked path. "The creature that stalked me last time pushed me north. Three ridges. I walked this bowl. I remember the split rock." She pointed behind him. Sterling turned. A pine had grown up through a boulder and cracked it in two. He would not have noticed it on his own. "The door in the hill is here." Her finger slid west along the map, off the inked lines, into the empty paper. "Two days. Maybe less." "Two days through unmarked woods." "I can draw it." She pulled a stub of charcoal from her pocket and began marking the blank paper. A curve for the bowl. A line for a creek she said ran south of them. A small square where the hill rose. She worked fast. The lines were sure. Sterling watched her hand. He had spent months telling her the woods were not a real place. Now she was drawing them from memory, and the drawing matched the ground under his boots. "You're sure." "I'm sure." He crouched beside her. The chipmunk hopped from her knee onto the map, sniffed the charcoal, and hopped off. Linny folded the paper along her new lines and slid it back inside her coat. "West, then," Sterling said. "West." He stood and shifted the pack on his good shoulder. The blade at his hip knocked against his thigh. They were not lost. They were pointed. That was worse in one way and better in every other. If Linny's memory was right, they would reach the hill by dark. If it was wrong, they would sleep in fae country. He stepped after her into the trees.