Holli's Arc

Chapter 4 of 4

Holli went back to the cliff a week later. The trench she had torn open was still there, a black scar cut down through wet sand to the sea. The fishing shed was gone. The crusader's bones lay half-uncovered at the bottom, one gloved hand still on a rusted shield. She had come to try the current again. Void walked behind her with the black iron pot. He did not speak. The three wolves stayed at the tree line. She knelt by the root she had used before and put her hand on it. The current came up slow. Then something else came with it. Cold, and older, and awake. She felt it move under the sand of the trench. It was not the current. It was in the bones. "Something's here," she said. "In the grave." Void set the pot down and looked at the water in it. The water had gone dark. "It follows your reach," he said. "When you pull, it wakes." She let go of the root. The cold thing did not go back to sleep. She could feel it watching, patient. If she tried to channel now, it would come up through her hand. She climbed down into the trench. Void followed. At the bottom she found what the sea had kept: a broken ship half-buried in the wall of sand, red sails rotted to strings, and the crusader beside it. On his chest lay a spiked iron star with a blue stone at the center. Battle-worn. Heavy. She lifted it. The cold thing in the bones flinched, then quieted. "It was his," she said. "He carried it when he drowned." She understood then. The dead man had been an anchor for something long ago. His body held the restless thing down. Her trench had cracked that seal. She could not put the sand back. She could give the seal something new to hold. She pulled the stone chip from her pocket and pressed it into the socket beside the blue gem. Then she set the star back on the crusader's chest and covered him with what sand she could move by hand. Void lit a lantern he had brought, the glass pale blue, and set it at the head of the grave. The light steadied. The cold thing sank. She stood up. Her hand was empty of the chip now. The price she had carried in her pocket was buried with the dead man. She had closed the wound she made, but she had spent her marker to do it. The next time she reached for the current she would have nothing between her and it but Void's voice. "I need a new price," she said. Void looked at her a long time. "Find one that isn't me," he said.