Eden Riverwallow's Arc

Chapter 9 of 18

Eden crossed the moss line back into her yard while the sky was still gray. The vial sat warm in her pocket. She had the seat's terms and she had refused them, but refusal was not the same as knowing him. She could feel that now, walking uphill with wet grass on her boots. She had learned what he wanted from her. She had learned nothing of what he had ever wanted before her. Inside, Kane slept on the cot by the stove. Willow drifted from the window, transparent lace catching no light. "He'll come back," Willow said. "You know that." "I know." Eden hung her coat. "And when he does I'll have nothing to say to him. I told him no at his own door. Anything I offer next will sound like pity or a trick." "So don't offer." "I have to." Eden sat on the floor by the hearth. "He's not going to leave. I'm not going to sit that seat. If I want him to stop hunting the edge of my yard I have to reach him some other way. And I don't know him. I only know what he wants from me now. Not what he was before." Willow was quiet a moment. Her voice, when it came, was flat and small. "I heard him once. In the woods behind your grandmother's. I was seven. He was singing." Eden looked up. "Not words I knew. It was old. He didn't see me. He stopped when a bird landed on a branch and he watched it until it left." Willow's mouth twitched. "That's all I have. I forgot until now." Eden stood. She went to the cupboard the cottage had opened for her before. She put her hand on the latch and waited. The latch did not move. She tried the drawer under the window. The shelf behind the kettle. The floorboard that had given her the amulet. Nothing lifted. Nothing shifted. The cottage sat closed around her like a held breath. "It's not going to help me with this," Eden said. "No," Willow said. "I don't think it can." Eden pressed her forehead to the cupboard door. A bird landed on the sill outside. She watched it the way Willow had described him watching. It flew off. She stayed at the cupboard a long time. Then she went to the table, took down a silver cup she had never used, the one shaped like a raven with red glass in its belly, and set it in the center of the wood. She did not fill it. She left it empty and waiting. "An invitation," she said. "Not a gift. He can bring what he wants to put in it." Willow drifted closer. "That might work." "It might not." Eden sat down across from the empty cup. "But it's the first thing I've done that isn't about me."