Hozier Bogman's Arc

Chapter 3 of 4

The next morning Hozier brought Florence back to the arbor bench. The vines had grown a finger's width overnight. He set the fiddle across his knee and laid a strip of wet peat on the wood between them. This was the day's lesson. Feel the water in the moss. Pull the warmth up through it without breaking the strands. She bent her head over the peat and hummed low. The moss darkened where her breath touched it. A green shoot pushed up from the strip, thin as a hair. "Good," Hozier said. "Now hold it." A snicker came from the ferns behind the arbor. Then another, higher. Then a third that broke into a wet laugh. Three shapes crouched at the edge of the moss, gray-skinned and grinning, twigs stuck through their hair. The bog hags. They had been agreed to stay out of sight after the last trouble. They were not out of sight now. "She's pulled a stem," the tallest whispered, loud enough to carry. "Tell the wet ones. Tell the wing ones." "Tell the pretty one at the well," the small one giggled. Florence's hand closed on the peat. The shoot wilted. Hozier stood. Every name they spoke was a door left open. He knew who listened at those doors. The fae woman. Whatever else was still hungry for a witch with rising power. "Enough," he said. "Go." They only grinned wider. Then the trees on the far ridge screamed. Not a voice. A pressure. A wall of dissonant sound punched through the branches, brass and something metal underneath, notes stacked wrong on purpose. The peat under Hozier's feet shook. The hags flinched as one animal. The tallest hissed. They scrambled backward on hands and knees and were gone into the reeds. Florence was already standing. "That was Isa." "Who?" "My anchor. From before the bog." She was moving toward the ridge. "She built a thing. She called it the Machine." They found the cart at the treeline. Layered brass pipes, rune-cut panels, wheels sunk to the axle in wet ground. A woman with copper hair climbed down from the bench, ink black on her fingers, coat mud to the hem. She looked at Florence without smiling. "You have hags," Isa said. "Had," Florence said. "I heard them from the road. Everything for a mile heard them." Isa wiped her hands on her coat. "So I made a louder noise." A crow dropped out of the alders and landed on the top pipe. It cocked its head at Isa, then at Hozier. Its eyes were the wrong color for a bird. Morrígan, in feathers. She had been looking for this cart. "Good," the crow said, in a woman's clipped voice. "Bring it." Hozier looked at Florence. The lesson was over. The hiding was over. Whatever came next would come loud.