Blushfire's Arc

Chapter 5 of 8

The morning after the archive, Blushfire climbed the ridge alone. He wanted to know if he could hear the entity without her. He pressed his palm to the wolf mark and asked one question. The cold slid into his skull before he finished it. His knees hit the dirt. He bit his tongue to taste something real and broke the channel with pain. He walked home shaking. He could not use the mark without Elara Memento's hand on his. And she was one girl with a stair to climb and a Keeper who needed her. He could not summon her every time the ridge stirred. He went to the craftsman house with the ivy on the porch. Melissa opened the door before he knocked. She was his, and he was hers, and he had let her believe this work was quieter than it was. She looked at his mouth, then his hands. "Sit down," she said. He sat on the porch swing. She brought him water and waited. He told her the truth. The mark. The voice. The girl with the keys who kept him from saying yes. That he could not go to the ridge alone anymore, and the ridge would not wait. She did not cry. She did not ask why he had not said it sooner. "Then we make an anchor that stays," she said. She went inside and came back with a small crystal on a leather cord. A flame lived in it, steady as a pilot light. She had made it in her studio the winter he was lost for three days. She had kept it in a drawer since he came home. "It is mine," she said. "If it goes out, I am gone. If it burns, I am here. Hold it when you listen. Feel me on the other end of the rope." He took it. It was warm. He climbed the ridge again that night with the crystal in his fist and the black book in his coat. He pressed the wolf mark and asked. The cold came. His name came back in the boy's voice. His mouth started to shape yes. He squeezed the crystal until the facets cut him. He felt her, plainly, at the far end of a line he could not see. He said no aloud. The channel shut. He sat down on the stones and breathed. The anchor held. He could listen without Elara Memento now. He had traded her hand for Melissa's flame, and Melissa knew the price of the trade. He wrote it in silver in the book so he could not lie about it later. Then, at the edge of the treeline, a stag stepped out. Not the coal-heart one. This one wore white flowers in its antlers and watched him without moving. It had come from the ridge side. Something on the far side had noticed the new tether. And it had sent something to look.