Thalen Greenleaf's Arc

Chapter 2 of 5

Thalen followed the dragonfly deep into the trees. The lantern swung in his fist, its moss-wrapped light bobbing over roots and stone. The splinter of heartwood lay warm against his chest. For hours the bright wings led him on. Then the ground opened, and the dragonfly stopped. Two trails split before him. Both were bare dirt. Both bent into the dark and vanished. No footprints marked either one. Thalen crouched and held the lantern low. He read the left trail, then the right. The soil told him nothing, the same as the pit where the tree had stood. He knew this trick. The thieves erased their steps. Pick wrong, and he could walk miles the wrong way while the tree slipped further from his clan. The dragonfly hovered between the two paths. It did not choose. It flew a little down the left trail, then darted back. Then down the right, then back. It seemed lost too. Thalen stood still. He would not guess. A guess could cost him everything. He drew the splinter from his tunic and held it in his open palm. The wood was warm. He remembered how heartwood worked. It stored the clan's memory in its living grain. Maybe a piece of it still remembered its own tree. He turned toward the left trail and lifted the splinter. Nothing. He turned toward the right. The splinter grew warmer against his skin. He stepped down the right trail, and the warmth spread. He stepped back, and it cooled. The heartwood pulled toward its parent tree, like a needle toward the north. Thalen laughed once, sharp and surprised. He did not need footprints. He carried the trail in his own hand. But the dragonfly did not follow him down the right path. It hovered over the left trail. Its wings flared brighter, red bleeding into violet, urgent. It flew a body-length down the left, then back to him, then down again. Thalen stopped. The splinter said right. The dragonfly said left. He looked at the guide that had brought him this far, and he looked at the wood over his heart. He trusted the wood. It came from his own tree. He followed the splinter down the right trail. The dragonfly circled his head twice, fast, then shot away down the left and was gone. His guide had left him. The bright wings that led him from his shelter no longer lit the dark. Thalen stood alone with a lantern and a splinter that grew warmer with every step forward. He walked on into the trees, and soon the right trail bent toward a strange light ahead. Between the trunks glowed a cluster of leaves in every color at once, red and gold and blue burning in the dark. The splinter in his hand went hot as a coal.