Page 30 of Thornlight

Cub didn’t understand. He knew what magic was—magic was part of the Old Wild, and the Old Wild held the world together. The Old Wild was what pumped through his own mossy veins. He even knew what witches were, for many lived in the mountains of the Vale. They chose to live there, his mothers had said, so they could be near the stars, for the stars were where witches came from, long ago.

But magic didn’t smell like this, and neither did witches. At least not the witches Cub knew.

He shoved his snout against his mother’s leg in confusion. “But witches are our friends!”

“Not these witches,” his mother replied, watching the strange fire race across the Vale. Then his mothers turned toward each other, forming a shield over Cub’s quivering body. Fire raced overhead and crashed into their mammoth beastly hides. Their bodies quaked above him and turned searingly hot.

He hid his face in the dirt as the world shook, horriblecolors flashing beyond his squeezed-shut eyes—and the great beasts that were his mothers fell to pieces around him.

And then the Vale—Cub’s home, the only place he’d ever known, so green and wild and bursting with life—split in two.

One half of the Vale thrust up into the clouds. This would come to be known as the province of Westlin. The other half dropped low. This would be called Estar.

From a pile of clover-strewn, fur-clumped ashes, Cub watched it happen. A roiling colored storm fell upon the mountains of the Vale like a rushing flood. He heard the cries of the witches who lived there. He saw the angry fire snap them up. Soon there were no witches left in the Vale—only charred spots on the ground where witch mothers and witch fathers and witch children had once stood.

In his old, monstrous wisdom, Cub understood that the witches had been gobbled up. The sky fire had thrown them right into the mouths of all the storms that painted the Vale’s sky gray and yellow and green and black. Cub heard the witches howl and shout, trapped inside bolts of lightning. He smelled the storms bleaching their hair and skin white. He watched the unicorns who’d escaped the destruction flee even higher into the mountains, crying out in terror and grief.

Cub thought he saw one particular witch, a tough old thing who was known for being clever, escape the fire. But then he blinked, and whatever he had seen was gone.

With the witches trapped, and the land beaten and burned, and the unicorns fled to the high mountains, magic left the Vale. It was a great loss, a thunderous snap in the air so loud it hurt Cub’s teeth. He howled and howled.

He called for his mothers, but they did not answer. He had already forgotten they were gone.

But the angry fire was not finished.

Between the two halves of the Vale opened a great chasm.

As the land split, the chasm opened—wider and wider, faster and faster.

Cub ran.

He ran away from the ashes that had once been his mothers. He ran with sap streaming from his eyes and river mud choking his throat.

With his snout he searched for friendly scents. Maybe he could find other beasts of the Old Wild, and they would lead him to safety.

But the honey-sweet, meadow-sweet scent of the Old Wildhad vanished. It was like even the ancient power inside Cub’s own body had gone hiding. Had the other beasts like him died in the fire? Was Cub the only one left?

He searched and sniffed and howled, but the only thing his nose could find was the smell of death, and fire that did not belong in the Vale.

An unfamiliar word came to Cub’s mind as he ran:war.

Then, because not even a great old beast like Cub could outrun the breaking of the earth, the chasm reached him, and he fell.

He fell for a long time.

He fell through darkness, through layers and old layers and older layers of the world, for the chasm was long and deep, and growing.

Others fell—wild-eyed animals, trees ripped asunder, farmers of the Vale who’d been tending their fields when the sky fire came.

But Cub fell the longest.

When he landed, it was in a damp, close place. Not the good damp, like river mud. Not the good close, like the warm, safespot between his mothers’ bellies while they slept.

Cub hid his face in his bloody, bark-covered paws and cried.

His tears made a new river, narrow and hot at the lonely heart of the world.

Cub awoke, years later, and remembered what had happened.

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