Sterling Forge's Arc

Chapter 9 of 31

The light thinned fast under the frostwood. Sterling watched the shadows stretch between trunks and knew they had maybe an hour. Linny kept moving, one hand brushing bark, the other tucked against her ribs for warmth. The chipmunk on his collar had gone quiet. "We need to stop," Sterling said. "Fire. Cover. Now, while I can still see to build it." "Keep walking. Another mile." "No." He caught her sleeve. She turned, ready to argue, and he saw her mouth was pale. Her hand shook where it held her coat closed. He let go of her sleeve. "You're cold through. Don't tell me you aren't." "I'm fine." "You're not. And a fire out here in the open pulls them straight to us. So we don't get an open one." She watched him. He set the pack down and looked at the ground instead of her face. Above them the icy branches wove together into a low, tight ceiling. Snow sat heavy on the boughs. He had an idea, and he did not like it. "Help me," he said. He picked a spot where three trunks grew close. He cut low pine boughs with the flawed blade and stacked them into a wall on the windward side. Linny worked beside him without asking why. She knew tools. She stitched the boughs together with strips torn from the pack straps, quick and neat. The chipmunk hopped down and burrowed into the needle pile she was building for a floor. Sterling dug a pit inside the shelter, small, a hand deep. He lined it with flat stones. Then he stripped his coat off and draped it over the frame above. "Sterling." "Put yours over the other side. Trap the light. Trap the smoke. It'll leak up through the branches slow. Nothing above us to see a flame." "You'll freeze." "I'll sit by the fire. Put it on." She did not move. He looked at her then. Her lips were cracked. There was a bruise of tiredness under each eye. He had promised her father two things in his lifetime. One he’d already broken. The other he’s die before breaking. "Please," he said. She took her coat off and laid it across the frame. She kept the hat. He struck steel to flint over dry needles inside the pit. The flame caught low and small. He fed it thin, splinter by splinter, so it never grew tall enough to touch the coats above. The shelter warmed. Linny sat cross-legged, hands out over the stones. Color came back into her fingers. The chipmunk climbed into her lap and tucked its snow-dusted tail around its feet. "Sleep," Sterling said. "I'll watch it." "You need sleep too." "I'll wake you in a few hours." She lay down on the needles. She was out before he could feed the fire again. He sat with the blade across his knees and listened. Wind. Ice cracking somewhere far off. No wingbeats. No voices. The little fire burned low and hidden, and nothing came for the light.