Ben Dover's Arc

Chapter 58 of 150

By first light the hum inside the shrine had thickened. Ben pressed his ear to the crate and heard the wax singing in three places now. The stone walls still held the sound in, but inside the shrine the air felt tight, like a bell about to ring. Amber slept sitting up by the door. Sandy was gone before dawn to watch the ridge. Ben needed wax, and he needed it without opening the crate. Any transfer meant ten seconds of open hum, and ten seconds through the doorway would carry a quarter mile in still air. Joe came through the door at midmorning. Ben had not called him. Joe walked in barefoot, leaves still caught in his hair, yellow eyes finding the crate first and Ben second. He had guided Ben to a relic in a hollow once and asked for nothing but covered tracks. He crouched by the crate and put a palm flat on the lid. "It's crying," Joe said. "It's cracking." "Same thing." Joe pulled his hand back. "You need sap." "I need wax." "Sap sets harder. Holds through cold." Joe stood. "There's a tree half a mile north. Big one. Old cut on the trunk still weeping. I passed it coming in." Ben looked at the door. "I can't open the shrine to fetch it and come back. The hum will roll out." "Then don't open it twice." Joe pointed at the shelf. The dented canister sat under its stone. "Empty that. I bring the sap in the tin. You seal from outside first, then we crack the door once for me to pass it in. One open. Not two." Amber woke and listened. She nodded. "One door. One risk." Ben pried the stone off the canister. Inside was dry ash. He tipped it out and handed the tin to Joe. Joe left at a run. He was back in twenty minutes. Ben opened the door a hand's width. Joe passed the canister through. The tin was warm and heavy with amber sap that smelled of pine and iron. Ben shut the door. The hum inside the shrine climbed. He worked fast. He pressed sap into the cracked wax along the lid, then down the front seam. The sap gripped the old wax and pulled it tight. The hum thinned. He laid the last of it along the back seam and held his palm on the wood until it stopped vibrating. Outside, Joe waited by a wide tree with layered branches, watching the ridge. Ben stepped out with the sealed crate on his shoulder. No hum. No leak. He set the crate on the cart. The seals would hold now, cold or warm, moving or still. But Joe was already looking north, and Ben followed his eyes. A thin line of smoke rose above the pines. Someone had lit a fire on the ridge road, close enough to see the shrine from the top.