Bailey Baz's Arc

Chapter 3 of 44

Bailey walked toward the deep water, free at last. But the freedom felt wrong. With every step away from the reeds, the tug in his chest went quieter. He should have been glad. Instead his hands looked strange to him. He stopped and pressed a palm to a carved root. No heat rose. No blue light spread. The old words stayed silent under his fingers. The swamp was letting go of him, and the letting go was scrubbing him away. "Cora," he said. His voice sounded thin. "I read those carvings before. I can't anymore." Cora Fenwick caught up, her stained robe dragging in the mud. She still gripped her cracked wand. She had helped him break his chains yesterday. Now she frowned at his hands. "You're forgetting things," she said. "How much?" "Small things. The child's face I saved. The way the pull felt." Bailey swallowed. "The vines made me what I am. Without them, I don't hold together. I'll lose myself before I reach him." Cora studied him. She pulled the broken totem from her collar. "The vines want the chain finished. You said so. Maybe they'll hold you if you let them work." Bailey understood. He had run from the debt to break it. Now he had to walk back into it, on purpose. He turned and pushed through the reeds toward the loudest crying he could find. A girl sat trapped in the mud near the water's edge. He did not fight the pull this time. He asked for it. The vines rose. They wound up his ankles, his wrists, warm and living. But he did not let them own him. He guided the girl to dry ground and pointed her home. As she ran, he pressed his hand to the nearest root. Heat returned. Blue light filled the grooves. His memories snapped back sharp. He remembered the boy's face, the tower, all of it. "It works," Cora breathed. "You feed it. It feeds you." "Every child I guide keeps me whole," Bailey said. "I walk the deep water through the children, not around them." He laced the totem's cord tighter around his fist. The path forward would be long and crooked. But he would still be himself when he reached the end. Then the water ahead shivered. A shape moved far below the surface, deep where the oldest vines sank. A voice came, dry and old, speaking in the tongue Bailey had just relearned. It carried across the swamp like a rope drawn tight. "You held together," the prisoner said. "Good. I need you whole for what comes next." Bailey's chest tightened, but not from any debt. Malachar Vex knew he was near. And the prisoner was pleased. Cora gripped Bailey's sleeve. "He's been waiting two thousand years," she whispered. "What does he want you whole for?" Bailey watched the shape sink. He had saved himself. He had also announced his arrival to the thing at the bottom. Bailey noticed that the two totems were halves of each other that he and Cora had. He combines them together to forge them whole when suddenly Cora vanishes and the den beams light that can help guide lost children. Bailey was confused and uncertain as to what happened to Cora. He suddenly hears a voice within. “I, the totem you wear, Bakataka, have given you sanction to move freely without binding through the swamp, but until we the totem are split in half again by the one you call the prisoner, the teenage girl will be trapped forever as a light in the den.”