Ben Dover's Arc

Chapter 17 of 150

They walked toward the cleft without singing, without running. Ben kept one hand on the boxes inside his coat so they would not knock. The three carved boxes were quiet now only because the felt-lined chest muffled them, and the felt-lined chest was a full day behind them at Lost Hollow, guarded by a girl who had been told to stay silent. Once he lifted the cup into a fresh box, all three would hum together in the open air. The blue-scaled thing would hear them from a valley away. "We need felt," Ben said. "Or something like it. Before we touch the cup." Justin looked at his hands. "We left the chest a day back. We don't have a day." "Then we make one here," Anita said. They stopped where the slope broke into loose scree. Ben set the three boxes on a flat stone and thought. Felt was wool pressed flat. They had no wool. They had coats, moss, and rock. He looked at the rock. A shape shifted at the edge of the scree. Small, low, four heavy legs. A rock creature the size of a dog stepped out from between two boulders, seams glowing faint along its flanks. It watched Ben with one dark eye. Not the tall one from the ridge. A smaller cousin, or a child of that kind. Ben crouched slow. "You know the striped one on the slope." The creature did not answer. It walked to the flat stone and set its wide head against the boxes. The hum, which Ben could not hear through felt he did not have, seemed to reach it anyway. It made a low sound in its chest and did not move. "It's covering them," Anita whispered. "Its body is stone. Stone kills sound." Ben tested it. He lifted the newest box, the one carved from his mother's keepsake, and cracked the lid a finger's width. No hum escaped that he could hear. The rock creature pressed closer. "We walk with it," Ben said. "To the low house. It sits on the boxes while we take the cup." They moved down to the burnt tree and took the left path. The rock creature paced beside Ben's leg, quiet as a shadow of stone. At the low house Ben lifted the hearthstone, a slab of weather-worn crag streaked with pale veins. Underneath sat a cup of dull metal. It hummed the moment his fingers closed on it. He opened the new box. He dropped the cup in. He shut the lid. Ten seconds of hum spilled out. The rock creature threw its body over all three boxes and pressed down. The sound cut off early, maybe six seconds in. Ben breathed out. Four relics left in the world. Three in his coat. And behind them, somewhere across the ridge, something had heard six seconds of open song and was already turning its head.