Bailey Baz's Arc

Chapter 2 of 44

Bailey turned toward the deep water, where the oldest vines waited. He took ten steps before the pull hit. It grabbed his chest and dragged him back, hard, like a rope tied to his ribs. A child was lost. He felt it the way he felt his own hunger. His feet turned without his say, back toward a crying somewhere in the reeds. He fought it and fell in the mud. The vines around his ankles tightened. This was the debt. It would not let him leave. He found the child by a leaning stone tower, moss thick on its cracked walls. A small boy sat crying under the hanging vines. Bailey guided him to the tree line and pointed home. The boy ran. The pull loosened. Then a voice spoke behind him. "You unlock things. I saw your hands glow at the roots last week." A teenage girl leaned from a gap in the tower stones. Her robe hung too big and wore splashes of green and purple. She held a cracked wand and watched him without fear. Bailey knew of her. She was the one who kept the old den's wards lit, though everyone said the wards were dying. Cora Fenwick. She climbed down and stood in the mud, closer than most people dared. "The vines won't let me leave," Bailey said. "Every time a child cries, they haul me back. I can't reach the deep water." Cora reached under her collar. She pulled out a small carved totem on a cord. Half of it, broken clean along one edge. Birds and waves ran across the wood, and rows of old marks. "My mothers gave me this," she said. "None of them knew what it says. But you read the roots. Read this." Bailey pressed his palm to the carving. Heat rose under his hand. Blue light spread into the grooves. The marks lit and gave up their meaning. He read slow. "It names the binding rite. It says the warden's debt is a chain. And a chain has two ends. The other end holds the one who made it." He looked up. "The prisoner. My debt ties me to him. If I break his end, I break mine." Cora frowned. "Then you still have to reach the deep water." "No." Bailey turned the totem in his hand. "The pull only fights me when I run from the children. It doesn't fight this. The vines want the chain read, not just walked." He closed his eyes and spoke the binding words aloud from the carving. The vines at his ankles shivered and went slack. For the first time in a hundred years, Bailey stood without the tug in his chest. He could walk any way he chose. He stared at the broken totem. "This is only half," he said. "The prisoner holds the other. And now he knows I'm coming."