Elsa Crane's Arc

Chapter 17 of 66

Bodhi slept in the schoolhouse that night behind the crystal door. Elsa did not sleep. She sat by her window and listened for the whisper on the lane. It did not come near the cottage. It was somewhere else, circling, waiting. She did not know what it wanted from the boy. She could not fight a thing she did not understand. At first light she crossed to the Tidebark Hut and woke Nora. Nora sat up in her waders and reached for the ledger before her eyes were open. Elsa said, "Bring the book. We are going down." They went to the meeting hall and lifted the trapdoor. Elsa lit the silver-and-gold lantern. Nora followed her down the stone stairs with the ledger held tight against her slicker. The cellar walls were cut with the old symbols, sconces guttering. Elsa stopped in the middle of the floor and set the lantern down. "Come out," she said to the air. "You wanted to talk. Talk to me." The cold thinned at her shoulder. A blue shape gathered near the far wall, drifting up out of the seam between two stones. Two soft lights where eyes should be. It had helped her once, pointed her to the lantern. Now it drifted toward her like it had been waiting for the invitation. "Say what you want with the boy," Elsa said. The voice came slow, thin as a draft. "He reads the marks. He is the one who reads." "So does Brynn. So do I." "You read them. He hears them. The wall speaks to him. It has been waiting for a mouth." Nora opened the ledger flat on her knee. Her pencil moved without her looking. Elsa watched a new mark form under Bodhi's name — not a cross, not a circle. A small open symbol like the ones on the cellar wall. "What happens if he hears you?" Elsa said. "He speaks for what sleeps below. He opens what is closed. The horned one walks out. Others walk out." Elsa's hands went cold inside her sleeves. Not a stolen successor. A door. The whisper did not want to turn Bodhi against her. It wanted to use his mouth to unlock the tunnels. "And if I keep him from you?" The blue shape did not move. "Then the marks find another mouth. But he is closest. He already draws them without being taught." Elsa picked up the lantern. The blue shape thinned and pulled back into the seam. On the stairs Nora said, "What do we do." "We keep him behind the crystal door. We teach him letters, not symbols. And we find what wakes if he ever speaks one aloud." She looked at the mark under his name. "Add a circle around it. He is mine to choose. Not the wall's." Nora drew the circle. The lantern steadied. Elsa climbed the last stair.