Tomas Wren's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Tomas Wren stood outside the archivist's home and tried to remember how the doe had died. He could not. He knew he had won the last tournament ever held. He knew the doe was his opponent in the final bout. He knew he had cut the antler from her body himself, because it hung on a cord at his throat, pale and speckled and light as a finger bone. Everything between the first horn call and the walk home was gone. Two years he had waited before he started looking for her family. Four settlements later, he still had nothing but a list of names and an antler that did not belong to him. The home in front of him did not look like a building. Its walls curved like something grown, and clusters of luminous mushrooms trailed down the sides in blue and orange. A trader three settlements back had given him the name written on his list: Reva Wolk, archivist. She kept records, the trader said. She kept records of things the Registry did not. Reva opened the door before he knocked. She was small, uniformed, grey from collar to boot. She looked at the antler first and his face second. "You're the one who won," she said. "Come in. Wipe your feet. I have twenty minutes before my shift." He followed her inside. The mushroom light made everything soft. She sat him at a table and put a cup of water in front of him. "Speak up," she said. "I don't do whispers." He cleared his throat. His voice came out rough. "I can't remember the hunt. I need to know where she came from. Her range. Her family." "The tournament kept records," Reva said. "Every bout. Every kill site. Location, witnesses, tagging. The Registry pulled them when the tournament ended. Ordered destroyed." "Destroyed." "Ordered." She stood, crossed to the wall, and pushed her hand into a cluster of mushrooms. They parted. She drew out a thin ledger bound in green cloth. "I kept the final year." She set it on the table. She opened it to a page marked with a strip of ribbon. His own name was at the top. Below it, in a clerk's tidy hand: a date, a bout number, a location he had never heard of, and a line reading pale speckled doe, three years, taken from the basalt feeding ground east of the ridge. He put his finger on the location. His hand shook. "That's where she lived," Reva said. "That's where the rest of them still are, if any are left. It's a week's walk. Registry patrols the road twice a month. If they find you carrying that antler and asking questions, they'll take it." Tomas closed his hand around the antler at his throat. "When's the next patrol?" he said. "Tomorrow."