Tammi ward's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

The rot had eaten a hole in Tammi Ward's front wall the size of a barrel, and the sun was already dropping behind the Dead Wood's black trees. She pressed her palm to the ruined boards, and they crumbled like wet bread. Beyond the gap, the forest waited. Every night the horrors from those trees crept closer to her homestead, and every night the wards her mother had carved held them out. But wards need a wall. She had until dark to seal the hole, or she would sleep on the wrong side of nothing. Tammi hauled her tools to the gap. She had planks, but they were soft with the same rot. She had nails, but nothing sound to drive them into. Her hands shook as she stacked what wood she trusted against the hole. It reached her knee. No higher. The pile would stop nothing. A small dragon no bigger than a cat scrambled up the woodpile behind her. Its scales glowed gold in the fading light, and its stubby wings buzzed. She had raised it from an egg found in the ashes of a burned tree. It nosed her cheek and chirped, wanting supper. "Not now," she said. "We're both in trouble if this stays open." Then she saw the thing growing at the wood's edge. A carnivorous flower stood tall as her waist, its petals split into a fanged mouth. It had rooted where the rot spread, feeding on the decay. Its stem was thick and hard as oak. Tammi grabbed her mother's rustic bow, the one carved with a little painted hen, and used its curved tip to test the plant. The stem did not bend. It was strong. She made her choice. Tammi hacked the flower down at the base, and its jaws snapped shut on empty air. She dragged the thick, thorned stalk to the gap and wedged it crosswise. Then she cut more. She lashed the woody stems together with cord and forced them into the hole, thorns out. The little dragon watched, then breathed a thin ribbon of fire. The flame did not burn the green wood. It hardened it, blackened it into something like iron. "That," Tammi whispered. "Do that again." The dragon crawled along the barrier and breathed on each stem. Tammi packed the gaps with the hardened stalks while the fire cured them stiff. By the time the last light died, the hole was sealed with a wall of fire-baked thorns, tight and unbroken. She stepped back, breathing hard. The wards on the doorframe glowed faint blue again. They had a wall to hold. Something moved in the trees, low and heavy, testing the new barrier. It scraped once against the thorns and pulled away. Tammi's hands were bleeding from the plant's teeth. The seal would hold tonight. But the rot was still in the rest of her walls, and now she knew the forest had smelled the weakness. It would come back for the next soft board.