Xavier's Arc

Chapter 19 of 21

Xavier stayed awake while the tiger slept. Its red coat glowed in the last light. He knew the color would draw eyes, and eyes drew hunters. The bond that made this beast his own also made it a beacon. A wolf's cry rose far off in the dark. Then another, closer. The pack had found their scent again, and the fragile hut would not hold against many. He woke the tiger with a hand on its neck. "Up," he said. "We move." The beast rose, rested now, its eyes bright. Xavier led it down the vine ramp into the black swamp. He aimed for the deep flower fields, where the ground turned wet and treacherous. There the mud ran deep enough to drown a wolf. There he could find safe ground the pack could not cross. A voice called through the trees. "Xavier! Wait!" Princess Amara pushed through the reeds, her red dress torn at the hem, her black heels sunk in mud. She had rescued him once with a word to her father's hunters. Now she came alone, breathing hard. "The hunters broke from my father," she said. "They followed the wolves' howls. They mean to kill the tiger tonight, whatever I command." Xavier's chest went tight. Wolves behind, hunters ahead, and only one path he trusted. "Then we go where neither can follow," he said. He pulled her onto the tiger's back and swung up before her. "Hold tight. Trust the mount." He rode into the flower fields. The blue blooms rose tall around them, their roots deep in the soaked ground. Xavier read the terrain the way Berry had taught him. He steered the tiger along a narrow spine of firm earth between the bog pools. Behind them the wolves reached the field's edge and slowed, whining at the water. Torches flickered where the hunters gathered, unwilling to chase into the dark mud. The tiger crossed the last stretch and climbed onto a raised island of solid ground, ringed on every side by deep bog. No wolf could swim it. No man could wade it in the dark. Xavier slid down and knelt in the wet soil. He dug his fingers into the mud and tore up a fistful of deep blue roots, the strongest kind, growing right beneath his feet. "We hold here," he told Amara. He crushed the roots and smeared the sap across the tiger's flank. The scent mask would confuse the wolves till dawn. He had reached the deepest safe ground in the swamp. Amara looked back at the far bank. The torches spread wide, circling the field's edge. "They won't cross," she said. "But they won't leave either." She met his eyes. "By morning my father himself will come. And this island has one way in." Xavier stared at the roots in his red hands. He had escaped the pack. He had trapped himself on ground with no exit, and the hunter who wanted the tiger dead was still to come.