Elsa Crane's Arc

Chapter 12 of 66

That afternoon Elsa took Bodhi back to her meeting hall and lit the enchanted lantern. The wolf padded ahead of them down the cellar steps. Bodhi held her hand tight, but he was smiling. She needed to see if that smile could hold when the dark showed him its teeth. She had not told him what waited below. She had not told him she hoped nothing did. The horned creature she had bargained with was still loose somewhere in the tunnels, and she had brought the blue-jeweled stake in her sleeve in case it came to collect more than she owed. They passed through the gap in the stone wall. The lantern threw silver-and-gold light on the passage. Bodhi pointed at the first symbol scratched into the rock and said its name under his breath, the way Brynn had taught him. Elsa kept her face soft. "Good," she said. "Show me the next." He walked her deeper than she had gone alone. He knew the turns. Brynn had taught him those too. At the third turn the wolf stopped and lowered its head. The lantern light bent around something in the chamber ahead. Elsa saw the horns first, dark red and wet at the tips. Then the green eyes, two small lamps in the black. The creature stood against the far wall in torn dark armor, taller than any man, waiting as if it had heard them coming for a long time. Elsa's hand went to the stake. She did not draw it. She looked down at Bodhi instead. He had stopped. His mouth was open. The chalk fell out of his fingers and clicked on the stone. She watched his face for the crack — the whimper, the turn, the run back toward the stairs that would tell her Brynn had chosen wrong and so had she. It did not come. Bodhi closed his mouth. He picked up the chalk. He looked up at the creature the way he had looked at the lantern that morning: hungry. "Is he one of the shapes?" he whispered. "Yes," Elsa said. Her voice was steady. "He is one of ours." The creature tilted its horned head at her. It had heard the word ours. It said nothing. It stepped back into the dark of the chamber and let them pass, and Elsa understood it was waiting for her to name its second payment another day. She led Bodhi out by the same turns. On the steps he squeezed her hand and asked when they could come back. She told him soon. She meant it. At the top she blew out the lantern. Bodhi ran ahead into the snow, chalk already moving on his sleeve. Elsa stood in the doorway. The boy would hold. He was hers now, not Brynn's. And Brynn, who had taught him the road down, would need to be answered before the next thaw.