Bunny's Arc

Chapter 10 of 4

Bunny pulled herself up the melted channel and reached the wound. It gaped above her, wide as a river, bleeding starlight into the cold. Far below, a huge crystalline figure braced against the glacier walls. Freudburgemur. He had held this realm together while Bunny climbed, and now his arms shook. His ice cracked along every seam. He was giving out. "Seal it," he called up. His voice ground like stone on stone. "I cannot hold much longer." Bunny saw the truth in his sagging shoulders. If he let go before she closed the wound, the whole glacier would fall on her. She pressed her chest against the ice. Her light poured into the break. It was not enough. The wound was too wide, and her fire had dimmed from every sacrifice before. The gap kept bleeding. Freudburgemur groaned. A crack split the wall near his head. "Your fire is small now." The blue glow returned beside her. Sof', the golden figure, faceless and old. She had drowned the whispering head with Bunny before. Now she looked at the wound, then at Bunny's weak light. "It won't close alone." "Then what do I do?" Bunny said. Sof' did not answer at once. Reaching for old knowledge seemed to cost her. "My light is older than theirs. It hurts to give." She pressed one golden hand flat against Bunny's chest. Blue light flowed into the triangle. The fire there flared, white and hot, bigger than Bunny had ever held. "Now," Sof' said. "Fast. I can't hold it open long." Bunny shoved her burning chest into the wound. Pain tore through her. The fire spread along the gash like flame on dry wood. Ice melted and ran, then froze again, clean and whole. The leak of starlight choked off. The glacier stopped shaking. Freudburgemur sank down the wall, spent but still standing. "It holds," he said. He almost looked like he might smile. He did not. "The realm holds." Bunny clung to the sealed ice, gasping. Her chest still held light, faint but steady. The wound was gone. Sof' stepped back. Her blue glow had thinned to almost nothing. Giving part of it had hurt her more than she showed. "I told the light I'd live for it," she said, flat. "I gave some away instead." She did not explain. Then a dark shape stood on the ledge where no one had been. A figure in a black suit and bowler hat, faceless, calm. Eridgenin. He watched the sealed wound without any sign of relief. "You fixed their ice," he said. His voice was plain, like he read it off a list. "Good. Now they have to decide." "Decide what?" Bunny said. "Whether to let a mortal come home," he said. "They buried that story once. They'd bury it again." He did not say more. The point was made.