Tomas Thornwood's Arc

Chapter 10 of 12

One fire had saved the rabbit's clearing. Tomas stared at the flames and knew the truth. The souls were everywhere. He could not carry heat to every part of the woods before dark. He turned to Auria. "We need more fires than we have hands. Or the souls will scatter past us and feed all night." Auria wiped ash from her palms. "Then we don't chase them. We pull them." She flipped through her family's book again. "Cold hunts heat. So build the biggest heat in the forest, in one place. They'll come to it on their own." Tomas thought of his cabin by the lake. Its hearth. Its wood walls. "My home," he said. "I burn a great fire there. The souls come for the warmth. And the lake at my door stops anything that tries to slip past." Luca pressed close to Tomas's leg. The fox boy's ears flattened. His brother had vanished to this same curse, and Tomas felt the small body shake. "You'll stay behind the fire," Tomas told him. "Right beside me. Nothing crosses it." Luca gave a small nod. They worked fast. Tomas dragged dry logs into a pile before the cabin door. Auria scattered dry herbs to feed the flame high. He struck the fire and it climbed, throwing heat across the yard to the water's edge. The lake glowed orange behind them. Cold began to gather at the treeline. Tomas felt the pull start in his chest, then double, then more. The souls came. Fern-tops bent with no wind. The air went bitter and thin. One by one the cold things slid toward the great fire, hungry for the heat. They hit the ring of flame and could not cross. The fire roared and the souls thinned, shrieking, and burned to nothing. Tomas stood with the heat at his back and Luca at his side. He counted them go. A dozen. Then more. The whole night's hunt drawn to one hearth and unmade. By the time the sky paled, the pull had left his chest. The ferns stood still. No frost spread. No animal fell. Auria let the great fire sink to coals. Then a figure limped from the trees behind them. Old, white-bearded, robes marked with knotwork. Tomas knew him. The druid who had shown him how to break the mage's box. Arthur Oakwhisper leaned on his staff and looked at the dead coals. "You drew them well," Arthur said. His kind face did not smile. "But not all came. The strongest souls do not hunger for warmth like the weak ones. They hunger for the living. Those are still out there, and they are hunting your kind now, not the deer." He fixed his eyes on Luca. "They will come for the spirits of this wood first." Tomas looked at the fox boy pressed against his leg. The night's fires had saved the forest's animals. But the worst souls were still loose, and they wanted Luca.