Chapter 6 Fleur
The tavern door groans softly behind me, swollen with damp and time. I don’t step outside—just stand in the frame with a ceramic cup of water cupped between my hands, the chill of it seeping into my palms.
I don’t know what time it is.
Late, surely. Or early, depending on how you count. The moon sits fat in the sky, casting a glow over the snow that’s almost painful. Too bright. Too sharp. It makes the landscape look bleached and brittle, like bone.
Somewhere behind me, the hearth still crackles. I can hear Winnie moving—slow and careful, like the air might shatter if she moves too fast. Neither of us has gone back to bed.
I lift the cup to my lips but don’t drink. Just let the cool rim rest against my mouth.
Something’s wrong.
Not just with the night, or the tavern, or the way the pantry door opened without cause. It’s deeper than that. Older.
I close the door and turn away before padding softly up the stairs. The floor creaks beneath me in that way old wood does—too loud in some places, eerily quiet in others.
Winnie had said her mother used salt for storms.
I don’t think this is the kind of storm she meant.
Upstairs, the hallway stretches quiet and dim, lit only by the cold spill of moonlight through the narrow windows. The floor creaks underfoot like it’s trying to announce me, but the walls don’t echo. The stillness feels suspended.
Behind me, faintly, I hear Winnie’s voice carry up from below. “There’s a candle on the dresser, if it’s too dark up there.”
I pause at the top of the stairs, hand trailing along the banister. “I’m fine,” I call back, though I’m not sure I mean it.
Still, when I reach the end of the hall, I find the candle anyway.
The nearly spent candlestick sits exactly where she said, in a shallow metal dish.
I strike a match from the box beside it, the flare of sulfur sharp and fast in the cold air.
The flame flickers once, then settles into a steady, golden hush.
It helps. Not much—but enough.
I pass my room, glance at the door to the small guest washroom, and keep walking.
Winnie’s door is ajar.
Just slightly. Just enough that a sliver of soft light spills from inside.
I hesitate. I shouldn’t. It’s not my place. But something in the air is pulling at me—soft and insistent, like a thread caught in my coat, dragging me forward.
I ease the door open.
The room smells like her. Dried herbs and old paper. Something warm, too, like cedar smoke and worn cotton. It’s the kind of scent you don’t notice right away, but once it finds you, it won’t let go.
The space is simple. A wool sweater is draped over the back of a chair. There’s a teacup on the windowsill, half-full. Cold. A thick-knit blanket folded at the foot of the bed. A journal on the nightstand, spine cracked and pages full.
And on the far wall, half-hidden in a low shelf of weathered books, something glows.
Not bright. Not showy. Just a quiet, steady thrum of light, as if the book itself is alive.
I set my cup down on the corner of the dresser, fingers suddenly clumsy. The closer I get, the louder the pulse feels—not in sound, but in sensation, like it’s vibrating under my skin. I should be unsettled, but I’m not. I don’t feel fear; I just feel…pulled.
The pull of fate beneath my fingertips.
The book isn’t large. The cover is worn leather, the edges frayed like it’s been thumbed through more times than memory can hold.
There’s a symbol etched into the surface.
Not any symbol or sigil I recognize—nothing from the archives, or the old grimoires.
It looks hand-drawn. Sketched in haste, maybe even desperation.
The glow leaks faintly through the lines of the ink.
It shouldn’t be doing this. Not without a spell. Not without intent.
I run my fingers lightly along the edge anyway, then open the cover.
The pages are thick, parchment heavy, the kind that resists turning unless you mean it.
They’re yellowed at the corners and fraying along the edges, the texture rough beneath my fingers.
The ink has faded in places, almost vanished in others, but the glow beneath it holds a faint pulse, a heartbeat beneath skin. Soft and steady. Alive.
Two witches.
A storm.
A spell left undone.
No title. No author. No indication of where the book came from or who wrote it. Just those words. Waiting like they’ve been waiting for a long, long time.
I turn the page.
The candlelight catches the edges of the parchment, casting flickers against the wall. For a moment, it almost looks like the shadows are moving in rhythm with the words. Like they’re listening.
The story unfolds slowly, each line written in a strange half-rhyme—part lullaby, part warning. The kind of cadence that settles deep in your bones before you realize it’s there. The ink curves in looping, deliberate strokes, as if the act of writing had been a spell in itself.
A town wrapped in thicket, where silence runs deep.
A moon that rose early and never let sleep.
The snow came too sudden, the wind came too fast.
And the girl in the clearing was gone in a gasp.
I turn another page. The candle gutters slightly.
They searched and they waited, but no one would speak.
The woods do not answer. The woods do not seek.
But magic remembers what silence forgets.
And snow buries stories that turn into threats.
The verses stop and start, fragmented and blurred.
Some are written clearly, while others trail off as if the writer’s hand faltered.
Still, the images form—familiar ones. A cabin, half-swallowed by trees.
A pair of boots left by a frozen river. A sigil scrawled into the snow and swallowed by the wind.
Another girl followed, with nothing but thread.
She whispered her name to the trees full of dread.
She called on old magic and begged it to bind.
But a spell left unfinished will always unwind.
I pause, breath catching.
I don’t know this story.
But I know this story.
It doesn’t feel like fiction. It feels like a memory I’ve been made to forget.
I flip forward—only a few pages remain now. The ink grows thinner, the glow beneath it dimmer. Some passages are water-streaked, smudged beyond legibility. Others are scratched through, lines drawn over words again and again until the page has torn.
The final one ends mid-thought:
When the moon returns early and the snow begins to…
Nothing else. Just a flicker at the bottom of the page. A mark that might be a tear. Or a drop of wax. Or blood.
I stare at it for a long time.
Not because I expect more to appear, but because I half believe it might.
I close the book slowly.
The chill that seeps into my fingers isn’t just the room. It feels internal, like something old waking up inside me.
I place the book back in its spot on the shelf, but it doesn’t stop glowing.
The symbol on the cover pulses once, faint and slow, like it knows I saw it. Like it’s waiting for something more. I step back, heart knocking too hard in my chest.
I don’t know what this is.
But I know how it feels.
Like something I was meant to find.
A warning…
Or a promise.