Elsa Crane's Arc

Chapter 5 of 66

Elsa slept badly and woke to knocking. Not on her door. On her window. Nora Lund stood in the snow in her yellow slicker, waders caked black. She held her ledger open against the glass. A fresh name was written in her hand. Not a villager Elsa had chosen. A boy who swept the baker's shop. Elsa pulled on her wool robes and met Nora at the step. "When." "Ink was wet when I woke," Nora said. "No mark yet. No circle, no cross. Blank name." "Because I haven't chosen him," Elsa said. "Jonas has." Nora nodded once. "Then he's still alive." They went fast through the pines. The boy's family kept a shuttered stone house at the village edge, iron-banded shutters closed tight, the front door painted the color of a fresh cut. Smoke came from the chimney. The door stood open a finger's width. That was wrong. Elsa put her palm flat on the red wood and pushed. Nora went in first with the shovel. The front room was warm and empty. A kettle hissed on the hob. A child's boot lay on its side by the hearth, laces still knotted. Elsa touched the boot. Warm. Not long. "Cellar," Nora said. The cellar hatch was propped with a flour sack. Jonas's mark. Elsa lifted her lantern and started down. The cold under the house was wrong for a root cellar. It bit like open air. Halfway down the steps, her breath went white and a voice moved past her ear. Not words at first. Then words. "He took him through the wall." Elsa stopped. A pale blue shape gathered by the far stones, thin as smoke pulled through a keyhole. Two soft lights where eyes would be. She had seen this one drift the graveyard at dusk. Nora had once tipped a hat to it. Never a name. "Through the wall where," Elsa said. "Down. Toward the under-cellar. He was quick. The boy was quiet." The voice thinned into a draft, then came back. "You are late by minutes." Nora came down behind her. Elsa raised the lantern to the back wall. A seam in the stone. A handprint in flour on one block. She pressed it. The block gave. Cold air poured out, and under the cold, the smell of bread. She listened. Nothing. No footsteps. No child. Elsa closed the stone. Her hand shook, but only once. "Write the boy," she said to Nora. "A circle. I'm choosing him. I'm choosing to bring him back." Nora opened the ledger on the cellar step and wrote. The pen scratched. A circle bloomed around the boy's name in ink that had not been there. The ghost dimmed toward the ceiling. "Then follow," it whispered. "He is still walking." Elsa lifted the lantern and pushed the stone open again.