Ghost of Madrigal Thornwhisper's Arc

Chapter 5 of 5

The bells along the eastern line had thinned to a single rhythm, and Madrigal felt her edges going with them. She drifted to the staff Winter had driven into the ground at the line's anchor — a twisted length of wood crowned with a crystal that burned low and orange. She wrapped what was left of her hands around it. The crystal steadied her. The line steadied with her. But every minute she held, more of her went into the wood and less of her stayed in the shape that remembered being a woman. The forest answered her fading in ways she did not like. A stone marker had risen from the loam beside her, pale and tall, and handprints were pressing themselves into it from inside. Her hands. Moss ran from the prints in slow patterns, like water. Farther down the line, an old watchtower that had lain in moss for centuries had cracked along its length and slumped further, stones spilling into the brush. The barrier was tied to her, and she was coming apart, and the forest was showing it. Liri Dewglow landed on the staff a hand's width from Madrigal's grip. The fairy looked at the handprints on the stone, then at Madrigal. "You have an hour," Liri said. "Maybe less." Madrigal did not answer. Liri went on, flat. "If you scatter, the line drops. The creature turns back west. The old one is in its path by morning." She tipped her head toward the staff. "Give the anchor to me. I'll hold it with the heart-roots. You step out." Madrigal considered the offer the way she considered everything — in numbers. Liri was small. The heart-roots were strong but slow. The handoff would cost the line three, maybe four bells of silence while the binding crossed. The creature would move in that gap. She said so. Liri did not argue. "Three bells," Liri said. "Or all of them, when you go." Madrigal looked east, where the bells still rang in pattern, and west, where the oldest oak slept. She let go of the staff with one hand and pressed it against Liri's small one on the wood. The binding crossed. For three bells the line went quiet and Madrigal felt the creature shift west and stop, listening. Then Liri's grip caught, the heart-roots answered through her, and the bells started again — slower, lower, but holding. Madrigal stepped back from the staff. Her form steadied. She did not scatter. She was thinner now, and the handprints on the stone had stopped multiplying, and the fallen tower lay still. The eastern line would hold tonight on Liri's strength, not hers. But the three silent bells had cost something. Somewhere west, closer than before, a branch cracked under a weight that had turned around.