Thornwyn Mossbrook's Arc

Chapter 27 of 38

The chimera walked west through the trees. Thornwyn held the wounded deer upright across the saddle. Her arms had gone numb an hour ago. She kept her fingers locked in the black mane and pressed her chest against the deer's spine to keep him from sliding. She could not feel her right leg below the arrow wound. She could not reach the magic. If the mount stumbled, she would fall, and the deer would fall on top of her, and neither of them would get up again. The forest was empty of anything that could help. The girl was ahead somewhere with the staff. That was all Thornwyn had. A root caught the chimera's foreleg. The whole animal lurched. The deer slid left. Thornwyn locked both hands in the mane and dragged him back with the weight of her shoulder. Pain went up her thigh and into her teeth. She bit down on the deer's ear to keep from screaming and tasted his blood. The chimera steadied. It looked back at her. Its wolf eye held on her face. "Slower," she said. "Slow." It slowed. Its heavy paws set down one at a time. Its antlers ducked low branches without her steering. She understood then that it was not carrying her the way a horse carries a rider. It was carrying her the way a mother carries a child across a stream. She let her forehead rest on the deer's neck. She counted his breaths. She counted the chimera's steps between his breaths. When the numbers stayed steady, she let her eyes close for one step, then two, then five. She woke because the chimera had stopped. The trees opened onto a shallow creek. On the far bank, stuck upright in the moss between two stones, stood her staff. The carved wood caught the last light. Someone had planted it there like a marker. Thornwyn lifted her head. Small footprints led up from the water into the ferns. A larger set of boot prints dragged beside them, one foot pulling. "Down," she whispered. The chimera knelt. Thornwyn slid off its shoulder with the deer in her arms and landed hard on her good hip. The deer's head fell against her thigh. He was still breathing. She crawled to the staff and closed her hand around it. The wall in her chest cracked. Warmth moved down her arm into the wood and back into her. Not much. Enough. She pressed her free palm to the deer's flank and spoke the binding word she had not been able to reach for two days. The torn stitches under the cloth pulled closed against her hand. His breath deepened. She had not fallen. She had reached the staff. She was not alone in the forest anymore. She followed the small footprints into the ferns, dragging her bad leg, using the staff as a crutch, the chimera walking behind her with the deer across its back.