Alex Ryan's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

Morrígan stepped out of the black water and shook her cloak. The water stayed where she had stopped it. She looked at Alex where he sat with the bass across his knee. "Keep him out of this," she said. "The bogman. He's already carrying rot in his ribs." Alex nodded. She crouched close so only he could hear. "Say it back to me." "He never knows I called you." "Good." She straightened. "I'm going to find the witch's machine. I want to ask her about noise." Then she was crows again, a black handful of them, gone over the trees. Alex walked back down the path toward the cottage. He could hear music before he saw it. Two instruments, easy and slow, folded into each other. He came around the hedge and stopped. Hozier sat under the woven arbor with a fiddle on his shoulder. Florence had a small banjo across her lap. Moss ran up the bench legs and touched their boots. The notes settled in the air like weight on a scale. Alex sat on the far end of the bench. He did not lift the bass. He wanted to hear them without adding to it. Hozier looked at him once, mild, and kept playing. The song had no hurry in it. A shadow crossed the grass. Just cloud, or a bird. Hozier lowered the bow. "Something's watching the fence line," he said. Florence's hand stilled on the strings. "The old blood?" "Or worse." Hozier set the fiddle on his knee. He looked at Alex. "Danu named a name this morning. Fomorian." Alex kept his face flat. Hozier said, "I've been thinking about my pact. The one that pulled me up out of the peat." He touched his own chest. "I think I made it partly so I'd be here for this. So there'd be hands for it." Alex felt the promise crack under his ribs. Hozier had guessed his own use before Alex could hide it from him. He opened his mouth. He closed it. Florence started a new chord, uncertain, and it did not match what Hozier had been playing. Hozier tried to follow her and lost the line. The song came apart between them. The moss at their feet flinched. The air went cold. At the edge of the yard, between two hazels, an elk stepped out of nothing. Its antlers were wider than the arbor. It did not lower its head. It looked at Hozier the way weather looks at a house. Florence set the banjo down without sound. Hozier stood. Alex found his voice. "I called her sister," he said. "This morning. Without telling you." Hozier looked at him. Not angry. Just seeing him plain. "I know," Hozier said. "Play the floor note. It's asking for one." Alex pulled the low string. The elk stepped closer to the grove, and the secret between them was over.