Ben Dover's Arc

Chapter 60 of 150

Ben walked north with the slow gray-blue creature at his heel. He kept the wrapped jar high on his shoulder, moving the way a man moves under real weight. Voices tracked him from the ridge, three at least, and the crunch of boots on frost. He listened for a fourth. He heard nothing behind him, and that worried him more than the three he could hear. He stopped at a bend and looked back through the pines. The shrine's dark wall showed between trunks, water beading down the stones from the melt on its roof. One scout had broken off from the ridge line. He was cutting a wide arc south, keeping low, circling toward the shrine's blind side. In another minute he would reach the brush behind the wall. He would see the tarp. He would see the crate. Ben set the jar in the crook of a root. He whistled once, low, the note he and Joe used for danger from the wrong side. Then he stepped off the trail and ran back through the trees, quiet as he could, cutting the scout's angle. He was still forty paces short when a small figure came around the shrine wall ahead of the scout. She was barefoot in the frost and soaking wet, her black hair plastered flat, water running from her sleeves in a steady drip. A puddle spread under her while she stood. Ben had never seen her before. Lolly Pop, he would learn later. Right now she was only a wet girl in the wrong place. The scout froze at the edge of the brush. His hand went to his knife. "Spring's back that way," Lolly said. She pointed east, away from the crate. Her voice was flat. "Follow the wet prints. You'll find it." The scout looked past her at the brush. Ben saw his eyes shift. He had caught the shape of the tarp. Lolly stepped sideways into his line. Water sheeted off her onto the leaves at the crate's edge. The tarp darkened. Every dry leaf Sandy had scattered went black and slick in seconds. The shape underneath vanished into a wet mound of muck that looked like nothing at all. "Shrine's empty," Lolly said. "Door's open. Go look." The scout went. Ben heard him cross the threshold, heard him curse the puddle Lolly had left on the floor, heard him come back out and jog north to rejoin the voices on the ridge. Ben stepped from the trees. Joe rose from the brush behind the crate, sap-black hands raised in a question. Amber lowered her knife. "Who sent you?" Ben asked. Lolly wrung her sleeve. Water ran. "Nobody. I'm looking for a spring. Heard there was one this way." "There isn't." "Then I keep walking." She looked at the crate. "You should too. They'll come back when the tracks dry."