Wanda Embermoor's Arc

Chapter 5 of 10

Leslie led them to the edge of a black wood. Dead trees rose like burned fingers against the sky. Beyond the trees stretched open ground, flat and bare under the stars. Leslie pointed across it. "The safe place sits on the far side. No walls there can hide us until we reach it." She tapped her lollipop patch. "And that eye watches open ground best." Wanda studied the empty field. The sealed crown glowed faintly under Elizabeth's arm. "If it marks us out there, the hunters come straight for the safe place. We lose the last hiding spot we have." Elizabeth crouched and touched the soil. Frost crawled from her fingers. "I can raise ice cover. A screen. But it will shine in starlight and show the eye exactly where we crawl." Her voice went flat. "That helps no one." Wanda's charred hands throbbed. She looked at the strange plants along the wood's edge. One bush drank the light, its dark leaves swirling with cosmic dust. Nearby, a berry bush held chalky gray fruit and black star-spotted leaves. An idea caught fire in her. "The dark bush eats light. If we move under cut branches from it, the eye sees shadow, not us." "Shadow moving across open ground still reads as prey," Elizabeth said. But she was already pulling branches free. "We need a reason for shadow to be there." Wanda knelt by the weathered tree standing alone in the field's edge. Faint runes glowed along its twisted trunk. She had heard such trees carried travelers far. "Then we don't crawl. We ride." She pressed her scarred palms to the bark. Heat flowed out of her, thin now, but enough. The runes flared. The dead wood groaned awake. "That will cost you," Elizabeth said quietly. "You've spent too much already." "Then I spend the rest." Wanda drew the dark-leaved branches over the three of them like a hood. She fed the tree more fire. The runes burned bright, then the tree bent its limbs and swept them up in a knot of shadow and root. The world lurched. Wind tore past. Wanda pressed the crown to her chest and held the shadow-cover tight. High above, a pink-iris eye drifted over the open field, searching. It swept the ground below. It found only a dark blur streaking under swallowed light, no fire, no frost. It circled once and flew off toward the black trees. The tree set them down hard on the far side. Wanda's hands were pale and shaking. She could barely feel heat in them now. But Leslie stood, unmarked, and pointed to a low door built into a hillside. "There," Leslie said. "Inside, the crown can burn and no eye will find it." Wanda carried the sealed crown to the door. They had crossed. The eye had lost them. But her fire had nearly gone out to buy the passage, and a crown of everlasting flame needed a witch who still had flame to give.