Whisper Foxyluna's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

The light on the walls held, but the black thread under Whisper's skin did not stop. It crawled past her wrist toward her elbow. She counted the beats between her own breaths and knew she could not wait until morning. She had to leave the cabin now, walk into the woods she could not see, and find the gate before the thread found her heart. She did not know the safe path. She had never gone that deep alone. The fairy landed on her shoulder and tugged her collar. Whisper shook her head. "I don't know the way. The mushrooms shift. I'll walk into a sink or a ring and never come out." The fairy flew to the window, pried a shutter slat, and pointed at the yard. The voice outside was gone. The boots had moved off. Whisper did not believe he was far. She wrapped the feather in a cloth and tied it at her belt. She took her knife in her good hand. The fairy squeezed through the shutter first and hovered above the frost, waiting. Whisper unbarred the door and stepped out. The light from the cabin followed her three paces into the yard, then thinned. After that there was only the fairy's small pink glow and the dark between trees. The fairy flew ahead and stopped at something Whisper had not noticed before. A stack of mushroom caps, waist-high, built into a rough cone by the trailhead. The fairy circled it, then darted forward and stopped at a second cone twenty paces on. Whisper understood. Someone had marked a path. She followed from cone to cone, one at a time, the numb hand pressed to her chest. Halfway in, the fairy veered off the line and led her through a bank of pale mushrooms she would have walked straight through. On the other side, a small figure stood in a lit circle of moss. An old gnome, bearded, short, one hand raised. The air around him hummed. He lowered his hand when he saw the fairy. "She brought you here," he said. "Good. He cannot cross my ring, but he is close. The gate is two turns on. Strike it three times. The keeper will answer." Whisper opened her mouth to thank him. He shook his head. "Go. The thread does not wait." He pointed past his shoulder, and she saw the next cone glowing faintly through the trunks. She ran. The fairy stayed at her ear. Behind her, once, she heard a short flat voice call something she refused to hear. She reached the gate. Mushrooms crowded its base. The wood was old and marked with iron. She struck it once with the hilt of her knife. Twice. Three times. The sound carried in a way nothing else had that night. On the far side, something heavy shifted, and began to move toward the gate.