Hecate's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

Hecate stood beside the great ring of red runes, watching the torches on her rack burn low. The names had gone up the river. No answer had come back. The ghosts drifted in slow circles, each one clutching a small bark strip — a copy of the name she had sent above. They held the strips like coins, like proof that someone, somewhere, might still remember them. Then one ghost let her bark slip. It fluttered to the stones. She turned toward the dull glow at the edge of the shrine, where the Lethe ran in cracks of fire and black rock. Others turned with her. The forgetting river was calling them home. Hecate ran to block the path, but her hands passed through them. She could not speak the truth — that help was coming — because she did not know if it was. Her greyhound pressed against her leg and whined. Her polecat darted to the falling bark strip and caught it in her teeth, keys jangling at her collar. The polecat carried the strip back to the drifting ghost and dropped it in her open palm. The greyhound stepped between the crowd and the burning river. He lowered his head and growled at the heat. One by one, the ghosts stopped. They looked at the small dark dog standing guard, and at the polecat darting from soul to soul, pressing each loose bark strip back into waiting hands. Hecate understood. She could not give them words. But she could give them her own. She lifted two golden torches from the rack and pushed them into the stones at the river's edge. "Stay inside the light," she told the ghosts. "My hound watches the water. My polecat keeps your names. Wait with them." The ghosts gathered close around the two animals. The pull of the Lethe dimmed. No soul stepped into the fire that night. The torches still showed no answer from above — but the waiting had a shape now, and a guard, and it would hold.