Ben Dover's Arc

Chapter 113 of 150

Ben lifted the painted chest by its iron handles. A low hum climbed out of the wood, thin as a wasp trapped behind glass. He set it down fast. The wolf twitched in its sleep. The ember creature pressed closer to the swollen joint and did not look up. "You said it was empty," Ben said. Tim came over and put his ear to the lid. His face changed. He lifted the chest himself and the hum climbed again, steady now, riding under the floorboards. "It was quiet on the ground," Tim said. "Moves, it sings." Ben opened the lid. Dust. Dry wood. No box, no bead, no relic he could see. He ran his hand along the seams and felt nothing loose. Whatever hummed was in the chest itself, or under a false floor he could not pry up without tools and time. "I take this into the open and every hunter on the ridge hears it before I clear the field," Ben said. "Then don't take it." "We had a deal." Tim looked at the wolf. The ember creature's flame ran a slow line along its back. "Deal stands. You take the chest. I keep the wolf." Ben sat on his heels. He had no felt. No sad-face box big enough to swallow a chest this size. He had a coat, a boot lining sewn with coin, and dusk coming down the field. Ella uncurled from the wall. "There's straw in the loft. Damp straw packs sound. My grandmother used it for cider jars." "Straw won't hold a hum past ten paces." "Ten paces gets you to the tree line." Ben weighed it. Ten paces was not nothing. Ten paces was the difference between a shape in the grass and a shape in the pines. He climbed the ladder and threw down two armloads of damp straw. He packed the chest in Tim's grain sack, straw between the wood and the burlap, straw stuffed into the sack's mouth until his fist would not fit. He lifted it. The hum dropped to a mosquito behind cloth. Not gone. Softer. Something moved in the straw at his feet. A small bright shape bolted out — scaled hindquarters, feathered wings folded tight, a fox's face with one horn cocked. It skidded under the wolf and stopped, watching him with a blue eye. Ben froze. "Yours?" Tim shook his head. Ella shook hers. The creature had come out of the chest's straw, or the loft, or the seam of the world. It did not hum. It did not run. Ben held out an empty hand. The creature stepped onto his boot and up his shin and sat on the sack, tail curled over the burlap mouth. The hum thinned again, thinner than the straw had done alone. Ben shouldered the sack. The creature rode it. "Dusk," Tim said. Ben walked out into the pale field with a muffled chest on his back and a small live thing keeping the sound in.