Esther Hollow's Arc

Chapter 50 of 8

The plant answered white under Esther's hand. Jen had the signal now. She would stop out on the dark water and wait. But a signal was not a name. Esther had pulsed the light three times, the old pattern that meant listen. Now she had to send the name itself, letter by letter, across the water where a soul kept sinking. She had never sent words through the light. Only counts. Only flares. She did not know if it could carry a name. The blue-haired child watched her hands. "You have it?" she asked. "I have it," Esther said. She held the sound of the name in her mouth. Then she gripped the plant and drove the light out in bursts. One flare for each letter, a pause between. She counted the alphabet in her head as she pushed each pulse, hoping Jen would count too, would read the gaps, would build the name from the light. Across the water the paired plant flickered. Short. Uneven. Jen was trying to answer. But the flickers made no pattern Esther could read. She stopped. Her hands shook on the leaves. Too slow. Too easy to lose a letter in the dark. The soul had minutes, not an hour. If Jen guessed wrong, she would speak a false name, and the water would take the soul down for good. Esther let go of the plant. She had spent her whole life sure she could carry every weight alone. She had drowned rather than call out. That was the thing that had held her eleven years. She looked at the child. "You can't cross again," Esther said. "I know. But you don't have to cross the water." She pointed to the plant. "You touched Jen before. Your hand went into her sleep. The name is short. Say it once against the light. Let the light carry your voice, not just the flashes." The child frowned. "I've never done that." "Neither have I," Esther said. "So we do it together." They both set their hands on the plant. Esther pushed the light. The child leaned close and spoke the name, slow and clear, each sound pressed into the flare. Esther held the light steady while the child said it once, twice, three times. The plant went blinding white. Then it dimmed to a soft steady glow, the color it held when a crossing was done. Esther and the child sat very still. Far out on the black water, they could not see Jen. But the plant told them. It glowed clean and calm, no flicker, no strain. "She heard it," the child whispered. "She said it." The last name from the lighthouse had crossed. The soul that had waited eleven years was free. Esther pressed her palm flat to the warm light and felt, for the first time, that she had asked for help and it had come.