Wren Kovar's Arc

Chapter 2 of 6

The pines closed over the path behind Wren like a shut mouth. The lit windows of the village fell away. Ahead, the abandoned house waited at the end of the trail, a black shape against the snow. She had the keys in her fist and the raven on her shoulder. She started to run. Her stockinged feet made no sound. The snow held her weight as if it wanted her to pass. She counted her steps to keep the panic small. At twenty, something behind her stepped too. She stopped. The step stopped. She started again. It started again, heavier now, closer than her own footfall had any right to allow. The raven's claws tightened on her collarbone. It did not caw. That frightened her more than a cry would have. Wren risked one look back. Between two trunks stood a moose. Frost caked its shoulders. Its eyes were flat and white, not looking at her so much as through her. It lowered its antlered head and came on at a walk that ate ground faster than her run. She broke for the house. The porch was still a hundred yards off. She would not make it. The raven left her shoulder and shot ahead down the path, low between the trees, then banked hard to the left and vanished. Wren followed it without thinking. She crashed off the trail into deeper snow and came up short against a cart tipped on its side. Frosted slats, spilled ice lanterns still glowing faintly in the drifts. Someone had left it here and never come back. Behind the cart, a woman crouched. Broad shoulders under a faded yellow slicker. Mud-caked waders. A leather ledger open on one knee, a pencil in her bare hand. She looked up at Wren without surprise, as if Wren's name were already on the page. "Down," the woman said. "Now." Wren dropped. The woman, the village gravedigger, reached past her and lifted one of the fallen lanterns from the snow. She held it out at arm's length toward the trail. The moose stepped from the trees. It saw the light. It stopped. For a long moment nothing moved but the woman's breath. Then the moose turned its huge head aside, as if listening to an order Wren could not hear, and walked back into the pines. The woman lowered the lantern. She looked at Wren's stitched face, at the iron ring of keys, and made a small mark in her ledger. "Elsa sent word ahead," she said. "I'm not to stop you. I'm to see you reach the door." She closed the book. "But I've already written your name in, girl. Whatever you wake in there, you don't walk back out the same." She stood, and pointed at the porch. The house was close now. The keys were warm in Wren's hand.