Thistledown Shimmerwisp's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Thistledown watched the sky turn grey. Lysander slept on. The fire had burned down to red coals. Thistledown stood up, faced east, and could not move his feet. East was the pine ridge. Past the pine ridge was the stream. Past the stream was the hollow oak where his mother wove and where the other fairy children flew in circles around him and would not land. He knew every step of it. He could not take one. He tried again. He lifted his left foot and set it down in the same print. His wings twitched under his silver shirt. Useless. Groundbound. The word sat in his mouth like a stone. A branch cracked behind him. He turned. Aldric Silverweave stood at the edge of the clearing, robe damp at the hem. Behind Aldric came a woman Thistledown had never seen. She was tall. She wore blue trousers of a rough cloth and a blouse covered in painted flowers. Round glasses sat crooked on her nose. She was staring at Thistledown the way a person stares at something that should not exist. "He's a child," she said. Flat. "You said fairy. I pictured— not a child." "Dr. Whitmore," Aldric said. "Stand there. Do not touch the fire." He looked at Thistledown. "You are still here. Sun is up. Your rescuer sleeps. The path is shut." "I can't," Thistledown said. His voice cracked. "I tried." Aldric set down his walking stick. "Then say it out loud. To me. Not to him." "Say what?" "Why your foot won't move." Thistledown looked at Lysander, still asleep, one arm across the empty pack. Four copper bits inside it. Two days of walking left, and Lysander walking every step of it for him. "They won't play with me," Thistledown said. "At home. They fly and I don't. My mother pretends it doesn't matter. It matters." He wiped his nose on his sleeve. "If I go back I stay groundbound forever. If I don't, he walked for nothing." Dr. Whitmore crouched down to his height. She did it the way someone does who has forgotten they are tall. "Kid," she said. "I got shoved into a place I can't leave. I know the face you're making. Walking toward the thing you're scared of is the only move that works. I didn't make it. Look at me." Thistledown looked at her. "Make it," she said. He lifted his foot. He set it down east of the print. The grass under his heel went warm. Not hot. Warm, the way a stone gets warm in sun. He felt it through the sole of his shoe. Aldric exhaled. "Water seam. Under you. The path knows." Thistledown took a second step. Warm again. A thin silver line brightened in the grass ahead, faint as a spider thread, pointing east. He turned to wake Lysander. Then he stopped. The line pointed home. He had opened it. Now he had to walk the whole way.