Willow Vinewood's Arc

Chapter 4 of 4

Willow woke before dawn to the sound of a man calling out beyond the border light. The trapper had circled back. His voice was hoarse and close, not angry yet, but working toward it. He was looking for whoever had sealed his camp. If he tracked the crystal line to its start, he would find her cabin at the forest edge before noon. She sat up. The fox kit was already awake on the rug. The fairy hovered above the kit's ear, watching Willow. Willow needed help larger than a barrier. She had heard her grandmother speak of a spirit that slept under the deepest part of the woods, older than the trapper's buyer, older than the road. It had not walked in decades. She did not know how to wake it. The fairy landed on the lid of her grandmother's box and tapped the wood twice. Willow opened the box. Under the folded cloth lay a curved horn of pale bone, studded with pink and blue crystal, warm to the touch. She had never seen it before. The fairy tapped the horn, then tapped Willow's mouth. Willow carried the horn into the trees. The fairy flew ahead, low, weaving between trunks. They passed the marked stump and kept going, deeper than Willow had ever walked. The ground rose. Between two hills stood an old altar of stone pillars, threaded with green veins that pulsed slow as a heartbeat. Moss covered the steps. Willow had lived at this forest's edge her whole life and had never found this place. The fairy pointed at the altar's center. Willow climbed the steps and stood on the worn stone. She lifted the horn. She thought of the kit in the snare, the ledger, the man's voice moving through her woods for coin. She blew. The sound was not loud. It was low, and it went into the ground instead of the air. The green veins in the pillars brightened. Something under the hill shifted, once, like a sleeper turning. Then the woods went quiet in every direction. She waited. Nothing rose. No figure, no voice. But when she walked back toward the border, she found a thing at the forest's edge that had not been there at dawn. A ring of bleached bones lay in the dirt, arranged in a perfect circle, crowned with small blue crystals that pulsed in time with the altar. In the center of the ring sat a small purple creature with folded wings and round eyes, watching the path the trapper would take. It was not afraid of her. It yawned, showing two white teeth, and settled onto the bones. Willow heard the trapper's voice again, closer now. Then she heard him stop. Then she heard him running the other way, fast, crashing through brush, no longer shouting. The little dragon on the shrine blinked at her once. The fairy landed on Willow's shoulder. The spirit had not woken all the way. But it had sent something, and it had sent it for her.