Blushfire's Arc

Chapter 4 of 8

The pencil names were still fresh in the black book when Blushfire went back down to the archive. He had held the wall through one night. He had not yet used the thing the wolf mark had given him. The tattoo artist had warned him plainly: the mark over his heart repelled the entity, but it also opened a channel. He could speak across the Veil now. He had not tried. He was afraid of what would answer in his own voice. He sat on the stone floor of the round chamber under the chapel. Glass bottles lined the walls, each holding a small steady light. A name in every one. He unclasped his coat and pressed his palm flat over the wolf mark. He closed his eyes and asked, in his head, who was pulling people through the ridge. The answer came inside his skull, not in words. Cold air moving through a mouth that was not his. Hunger arranged like arithmetic. Seven counted. An eighth wanted. His own name spoken back to him in the voice of the eleven-year-old boy he had failed to reach. Blushfire's hands started to shake. He heard himself agree to something. He did not know what. He opened his mouth to answer and could not remember why he was in the room. A hand touched his shoulder. Small. Cloth-wrapped. Keys clinking softly against each other. The Keeper's apprentice had come down the stair without a sound. She was wrapped in black, silver keys hanging from her belt and sleeves. She was the one who opened memories people had lost. She knelt beside him and put one key into his hand and closed his fingers around it. "Hold this," she whispered. "Not that." The cold in his skull thinned. He could hear his own breathing again. She did not let go of his hand. "You cannot listen alone," she whispered. "It uses what you love. I will sit. You speak. I will pull you back when your face changes." He tried again with her hand on his. He asked the question. The voice came. It offered him the boy alive if he opened the ridge himself. His mouth started to shape yes. Elara Memento squeezed his hand hard. The key bit into his palm. He heard her whisper his name once, low. He said no out loud. The channel snapped shut like a door. He stayed on the floor a long time. She stayed beside him. When he could speak, he told her what it had offered and what it wanted. An eighth. Him, if he came willing. The ridge opened from this side. He wrote it in the black book in silver ink so he could not erase it. Then he closed the book. He knew now who was pulling. He knew the price. And he knew he could never listen again without her hand on his.