Sylvara Thornwhisper's Arc

Chapter 3 of 8

The beast walked west all afternoon. Sylvara lay flat on its mane and watched the ground pass. Her wings would not fold right. Her light was almost gone. She tried to speak to the animal the way she spoke to the old trees, with a thought pressed behind the eyes. Nothing came back. The beast only walked. She tried words next. "Stop," she said into the mane. "Please." The ears flicked. The hooves kept their rhythm. She tried the small tongue the forest had taught her, the one she used for deer and thrushes. The beast huffed once and walked on. It did not know her. She did not know it. The sun dropped. The road bent. She smelled woodsmoke before she saw the roof. A low building sat off the track, pale pink and pale green in the last light, with window boxes and a painted sign. A tavern. Beside it, a stone pit burned with a green flame that threw no heat she could feel from the beast's back. The green pulled at her. It was the color of her own lost shine. The beast slowed. She sat up. If it passed the tavern, she was gone with it into the dark, and she did not know where the dark ended. She had to get off here. She had one thing left in her hand. She pulled the rose from her sleeve. The petals were dry now, but the fox's magic still hummed in the stem. She leaned forward and held the rose in front of the beast's eye. "Down," she said. "Down, please." The beast stopped. It sniffed the rose. Then it knelt in the dust beside the fire pit, slow and careful, the way it had knelt in the meadow. She slid off its shoulder and landed hard on her knees. The beast rose, turned, and walked back the way it had come. It did not look at her again. She sat in the dirt. The green fire crackled beside her. Her legs would not hold yet. She had gotten off, but she had gotten off nowhere she knew, and the beast had taken the road west with it. Then the tavern door opened. A small figure stepped out onto the step, purple fur in the green light, a fresh rose behind one ear. The fox who had sent her walking. The fox who had sat two days' road behind her, in another town, in another chair. Lavinia looked at Sylvara in the dirt. She looked at the retreating beast. She looked at the dying rose in Sylvara's fist. "You're early," Lavinia said. "That's bad." She came down the step and crouched in front of Sylvara. Her clipped voice did not rise. "Someone followed you," she said. "They're already inside."