Theodore's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Theodore perched on a low branch and watched the forest paths he had guarded for sixty years. Tonight he was waiting for the young wanderer who had slipped in at dusk, hoping to guide her past the rot before the rain came. Then a crash broke the quiet beneath him. A stranger staggered from the trees and fell at the foot of an old stump ringed with pale ice mushrooms. Blood darkened his sleeve. Behind him, far back through the silver-leafed grove where thin air plants swayed, Theodore could see a crude shelter of branches still standing. A small pink creature with shimmering wings circled the man's shoulder, nudging a silver box into Theodore's view. The box was carved and set with a green stone. Theodore had seen many maps in his long years. He had never seen this one. The lid opened under his talon. Moonlight struck the surface, and lines bloomed across it — rivers Theodore did not know, a ridge that bent the wrong way, a safe path drawn straight through the Sunken Hollow where no safe path could be. Theodore stared. Every route he trusted, every warning he carried, sat wrong against this map. The stranger groaned and reached for his sleeve. "You have to listen," he whispered. "The forest you think you know is gone."