Violet Blackstone's Arc

Chapter 2 of 14

Violet rode west until the trees closed over the trail. The trapper's directions ran out at a dry creek bed. She dismounted and led her horse up the ridge, then down the other side. By afternoon she had crossed three ravines and found no shed, no boy, no track. The forest kept its people hidden. She had ridden out with a name and a rumor, and the rumor was thinning by the hour. She stopped at a spring to water the horse. Her legs shook. She had slept four hours in two days. If she pushed another ridge west she would be too tired to ride back. If she turned back now she would return with nothing. She was about to remount when she smelled woodsmoke. She tied the horse and went on foot. The smoke led her up a slope of pink-fronded trees heavy with clustered fruit. Past them, in a clearing, stood an old stone pillar half sunk in moss. Carved spirals wound down its face. A small fire burned at its base. A woman knelt by the fire, grinding something in a wooden bowl. She wore a patterned headscarf knotted under her chin and a shawl too heavy for the season. Her hands moved fast. Her face was not old. "Sit," the woman said, without looking up. "You've been walking in circles since noon." Violet did not sit. "Who are you?" "Nadia. Petrova. Sit before you fall." Violet sat. Nadia handed her a strip of dried meat and a handful of the pink fruit from the trees behind them. "I'm looking for a boy," Violet said. "Chained in a shed. Somewhere past the second ridge." Nadia snorted. "There is no shed. That story has been walking these woods for a year. Trappers pass it on. It moves a valley every time it's told." Violet's throat closed. Three days. She had left the lambs and Colton and the open gate for a story. "But there are people," Nadia said. She tapped the stone pillar. "The cast-outs know this marker. They come here for water. They come at dusk. Not all of them, but enough. If you want to find survivors, you stop hunting them. You wait where they already go." "How do you know this?" "Because I have fed them here for six winters." Nadia looked up. Her eyes were gray and steady. "You are the woman with the farmhouse." "Yes." "Then stop riding blind. I will show you the four stones in this range. Sit at them, and they will come to you." Violet ate the meat. She ate the fruit. For the first time in a week the map in her head had marks on it. "Show me," she said. Behind them, in the pink trees, something on two legs shifted its weight and watched. Violet saw the shape of a man's shoulder, the ridge of a wolf's ear. Then it was gone. Nadia did not turn. "One is already deciding," she said. "Good. Let him decide."