Elsa Crane's Arc

Chapter 9 of 66

Elsa left Brynn sleeping by the hearth and walked with the wolf through the pines. The abandoned house stood open. She climbed down into the cellar. The stone wall gaped where Jonas had gone through. Beyond it, roots split the old masonry and a passage sank into the dark. She lit her tallow candle. Ten steps in, the flame guttered and died. The dark pressed close. Something breathed further down. Not the wolf. Not her. She backed to the cellar and set her hand on the wall. Her fingers shook. She had crowned no one. If she went down blind, she would not come back up, and Alpenglow would wake tomorrow to no elder and a girl asleep in a chair. The air by the stairs went cold. A blue shape gathered against the stones. The ghost — the same wispy figure who had told her about the passage days ago, when the boy first vanished — hung in the corner. Its voice came thin, like wind under a door. "Not that light," it said. "It won't burn down there. The thing under the roots eats tallow flames." "Then I have nothing," Elsa said. "You have the bird." The ghost drifted closer. Its hollow eyes fixed on her. "The soot-throat raven who sits above your meeting hall. He remembers a lantern the old priests carried through these tunnels. Silver and gold. It shines like a star. The thing below will not cross its light." "Where." "Ask him. He'll take you." Elsa climbed out. The raven was already on the fence post, white throat bright against his black feathers, as if he had been waiting. She held out her wrist. He hopped down. She spoke the ghost's word to him — lantern — and he lifted, circled once, and flew low toward the far end of the village. She followed with the wolf. The raven led her to a collapsed cart half-buried in old snow behind the chapel ruins. He landed on the splintered boards and pecked twice. Elsa knelt and pulled the boards aside. Inside a nest of straw sat a silver-and-gold lantern. Its glass held a small, steady light, like a star kept in a jar. Warmth came off it through her wool. She carried it back to the cellar. At the passage mouth she lifted the lantern. The dark drew back. Something further in made a wet, retreating sound along the stone. The wolf's ears flattened, then rose. Elsa stepped through the roots. The light held. Her boots found the first stair down. She could go now. She would come back up. Behind her, faint and dry, the raven called once from the cellar mouth. Ahead, in the passage, she heard a child cough.