Winnie Sanderson's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Winnie Sanderson woke on a cold stone floor with one thought burning in her skull: her spellbook was gone. The book held the recipe for her potion of eternal youth. Without it, she would wither like a dead leaf. She clawed to her feet and searched the dusty room, but her hands came up empty. Someone had beaten her again, and they had taken the one thing she could not live without. She stood in the old cottage, her home, now silent and robbed. The last fight returned to her in flashes. Candles. Shouting children. A circle of salt she could not cross. Then nothing. She had lost, and in losing she had lost the book. Now she had no trail, no clue, no first step. A hunter without a scent is only a fool stumbling in the dark. Winnie's sisters were not here to help her. She was alone. Her anger was useless. She forced herself to think. The book was not an ordinary object. It was bound with old magic, stitched with spells into every strap and clasp. Magic like that leaves a mark. Magic calls to magic. She found a shallow bowl on the hearth and filled it with rainwater from a cracked window ledge. She pricked her thumb on a rusted nail and let three drops fall. The water turned dark. She leaned over it and whispered the only words that mattered. "Book. My book. Show me where you sleep." For a long moment, nothing stirred. Winnie's heart pounded. If this failed, she had no other plan. Then the water trembled. A thin green light rose from the surface, the same green that glowed on the book's painted star. The light thickened into a line. It pointed straight through the window, toward the town below. Winnie gripped the bowl so hard it cracked. The spell had worked. The book still lived. It still answered her blood. The green thread hung in the air, faint but steady, like a hair of light pulling toward the heart of the town. She followed the thread to the window and looked out. Lamps flickered among the houses. The line sank down into those streets and vanished among the roofs. Her book was down there, in a stranger's hands, inside a town full of people who would gladly burn her. Winnie smiled, and it hurt her stiff face. She had her trail at last. But the thread led straight into the one place most eager to see her dead. She wrapped her shawl tight and stepped out the cottage door. The hunt had begun, and it led downhill, into the light, into danger.