Beth Wonders's Arc

Chapter 10 of 29

Beth pushed off the trunk and looked at the ice witch. Elizabeth Frostwyn had robbed her once. Now she stood in the moss with wet hem and honest fear on her face. "How close," Beth said. "Minutes. It's climbing the roots on your side. When it hits this end, it comes out here." Beth pressed her palm to the purple bark. She felt it at once. A cold thread inside the wood, moving up like sap in reverse. Her half-built cathedral had no back door. The far end of her world was open sky and unfinished floor. She could not run there and slam a shutter. "I can't seal that side," Beth said. "There's nothing built to seal." "Then don't seal it," Elizabeth said. "Cut the root before the thing crosses." "That kills my anchor. My world drifts. I lose everything again." Elijah stepped closer. "Lose the world or lose your life. Pick." "Helpful." A second man walked out of the ferns behind him. White coat, silver braids, gold dagger at the hip. Beth had never seen him up close. Elijah did not turn, so she knew he was expected. The Ghost. Elijah's crypt bargain, walking on two legs. "The tree is bleeding frost," Blanchard said. He did not raise his voice. "Ten seconds, perhaps." Beth looked at the bark. White crystals were pushing through the purple in a slow spiral. The blue leaves had started to curl. She made the choice fast, because slow would cost her everything. "Not cut," she said. "Pinched." She dug her fingers into the moss at the base of the trunk and found the two roots. One drove into the cathedral doorstep. One drove into her world. She grabbed the second root with both hands. It was already cold. Her palms stuck to it. "Elizabeth. Freeze this root. Only this one. Fast." Elizabeth stared. "That will kill the far end." "It'll kill the far end slow. Frost stops moving through frost. It buys me a week." Elizabeth knelt. She set both hands over Beth's and breathed out. The root went white under Beth's fingers. The cold climbed to Beth's wrists and stopped. Inside the wood, the crawling thread hit the ice wall and shuddered. Something on the other side screamed. Beth felt it in her teeth, not her ears. Then it went quiet. Beth pulled her hands free. Skin came away with the bark. She did not look at them yet. The tree still lived. One root held the cathedral. One root was a frozen stump that led nowhere she could reach. "Anchor's half," Wanda said from the smoke line. "World's sealed off from you too." "I know." Beth's voice shook. Her cathedral hummed against her back, steady. Her world sat behind a wall of ice she had asked another witch to build. She would need a new way in. She did not have one yet.