Dutch's Arc

Chapter 4 of 6

Dutch slept with the map under her hand. She dreamed of cold water moving through stone, and a voice counting beside her ear. When she woke, the ivy outside her window was still. On her pillow sat a necklace of blood-red crystals on a silver chain, warm as a held hand. Beside it, the first small crystal pulsed faintly, like it was answering. She sat up slowly. The warmth was wrong for stone, wrong for morning. She knew, without being told, that this was a second mark — a courtship step from something that did not yet have a face. If she walked down to the cold room now, she would be answering a call she did not understand. She set the necklace aside and did not put it on. A pair of dark blue dangle earrings lay on her desk where nothing had been the night before. When she lifted them, they whispered. Faint voices, layered, mournful — lost students, she thought, or older things. They did not speak words at first. Then one said, clearly, hidden library. Another said, before you go down, read what they tried to erase. Dutch fixed the earrings to her ears. The whispers settled into a steady hum, pointing her away from the lower stairs and toward the older wing of the ivy-covered dormitories. She left the warm necklace on the pillow, untouched. She would not descend blind. She would find the library first, and learn what the warmth meant, before she let anything claim her.