Zia Sunroot's Arc

Chapter 14 of 17

They walk west until the sun is high. That is when Zia notices the coyote. It moves at Teo's hip like it has always been there. Yellow eyes. Dust on its shoulders. A blue bandanna with faded stars is knotted loose at its throat, the stitching uneven, like a person tied it in a hurry. Zia stops. The coyote stops. Teo reaches for his knife. "Don't," she says. "Look at its neck." The cloth is old. The stars are the same yellow as the marks on Jarek's tablet. Her chest goes tight. She does not know if Jarek tied it there years ago, or if someone living tied it last night. The coyote trots ahead and pauses at a huge cracked boulder ringed with dry sage. It sniffs a low groove in the stone, scratched deep, claw-deep. Then it looks back at her. It has been here before. Zia kneels and touches the marks. They are old. Older than the bandanna. "It knows the road," she says. They follow. By dusk the coyote leads them to a small shrine — two stone pillars, a faded cloth tied across the top, the colors almost gone. The coyote lies down beside the left pillar like it has slept there many nights. Teo sets down his pack. Zia does not. She circles the shrine. Behind it, half-hidden in scrub, is a rocky outcrop with a dark mouth and old bones at the entry. A den. Empty now. Zia unties the bandanna from the coyote's throat. The animal lets her. Inside the knot is a curl of paper, dry and brown. Three words in a careful hand: keep going west. The writing is not Jarek's. She has seen Jarek's hand on the tablet. This is newer. Someone else is ahead of them. Someone who knew they would come this way, and sent the coyote back to find them. She folds the paper into her palm. The coyote watches her, calm, waiting. "Not a beggar," she says to Teo. "A messenger." She ties the bandanna back, gentler this time. "We sleep here. At dawn we go where it leads." The coyote closes its eyes. Zia does not. Someone is waiting for them at the crater. Someone who is not Jarek. The road has a third traveler now, and she did not choose them.