Page 2 of Burn Bright
If it were a fox, it would have at least eaten one ofthem.
"Forest, welcome me," I whispered. There was no point in lingering anylonger.
The strangest thing occurred when I slipped beneath the boughs of Gravenwold. My lungs opened up as if I could breathe again and I felt the forest in my blood, running hot in myveins.
No one else from Densby could move like I did beneath the forest's shadow. Only my father could, but he was getting worse by the day, his lungs thick with some malevolence he couldn'tshake.
I started running, feet tramping the trail buried beneath the fresh litter ofsnow.
I ran to escape the world behind me, with its empty belly, and the coughing bark of sickness. I ran to fill my lungs with the burning air, knowing instinctively where to put my feet to avoid a hidden pit beneath the snow. Hunger couldn't wear me down. Not here. Nor could it slow me. The forest fed my soul, and I could feel my cheeks stinging with the cold as I raced along old trails I knew like the back of myhand.
They say my father was born beneath the shadow of Gravenwold, and now, with blood surging through my veins, I believed it. How else could his daughter find such enlightenment, when her very soul was heavy? How else could I find the energy to slip over the snow like a wraith, when last night's meal had been more broth thansoup?
It had been weeks since I dared venture out, but I knew the regular routes the deer favored. With the last blizzard of the season abating, they wouldn't be moving far, trying to conserve energy during the blistering chill. Pockets of cedar and thickets where they could hide from the winds would show signs ofthem.
But the trails I found were old, and all that remained of their presence was the stripped bark on several birch trees. Casting around for signs of smaller game, I laid several snares in likely places before movingon.
A rabbit would be nice, but it wouldn't feed three growing girls for too long. And my father needed meat to give him energy, and help him fight hisillness.
Moving slower now, I saw the quick patter of tracks that indicated a fox. A recent passing, for the snow hadn't settled until last night. There was no wind this deep in the woods, and everything lay oddly silent; it looked like a glittering cathedral, where the rasp of my breath sounded oddly sacrilegious. Snowflakes danced through the air, barely enough to be called asnowfall.
Andthere...
A trail that clearly belonged to the deer I needed to bringdown.
A freshtrail.
Darting through the snowdrift like alone wolf, I kept my eyes and ears open. The forest flashed past me, and every time I thought I'd almost lost the trail it would appear again. Taunting me. Drawing me further into theforest.
It wasn't until I ran out of breath that I stopped and bent over, fighting the stitch in my side. Trinity's bells, how far had I run? I didn'trecognize—
A pair of bushesrustled.
Even as I drew one of my goose-tipped arrows from its quiver and set it to my lax bow, I noted the thicker brambles in the undergrowth, and the heavy, watchful boughs of conifers. Every other tree stood straight and stark, but the brambles were the first sign of the border between the outskirts of the forest, and the mysterious Heart nobody dared enter. They called the brambles Widow's Thorns, after some long ago Queen who'd poisoned her husband with a tea brewed from them—and inch-by-inch they were slowly choking theforest.
Too close to the edges of where I dared stray. The forest guardians wouldn't protect me here. Stay? Orgo?
A whisper of sound caught my ear again, just as I turned togo.
Movement shifted out of the corner of myeye.
Gleaming like polished alabaster beneath the sun, the White Hart grazed before me, separated from me only by a thicket of brambles. It hadn't seen me. My breath caught in my chest. I hadn't seen the clearing earlier, but a single ray of sunlight pierced the clouds above and lit upon thestag,
The White Hart was purelegend.
Capture the stag and it could grant you a wish. Kill it and you would live on forever, in the stories of men. Nobody had seen it in over acentury.
Its meat would feed my family for a month, if we rationed thesupply.
Barely daring to move, I drew the bow slowly to my cheek, my gaze narrowing into a tunnel along the arrow, locking onto the pulsing beat of the hart'schest.
Think of what the villagers would say. The White Hart! Brought down by my arrow alone. I could almost imagine the smoky laughter in the village inn cutting off abruptly as I staggered inside with the deer slung over my shoulders, and the startled looks on the men's faces turning torapture—
I shook my head, dislodging snowflakes from my thick lashes. I'd never craved glory, and the men in my village werelouts.
—the deer's head mounted on the wall, a glossy trophy one could foreverclaim—
I couldn't doit.
