Iris Meadowrest's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

The witches were gone. Iris latched the gate and turned back to the mossed tomb where Meridian Gravesight waited beside the yew. The graveyard felt held, like a room after a door closes. Iris walked the path between the small stones and stopped an arm's length from the tomb. The cats came with them, silent, watching. The sweet black cat pressed against Iris's boot and sat down on the moss. "I don't know the rite," Iris said. "I never learned one. If I guess, and I'm wrong, what happens to them?" Iris nodded at the cats. "Bound," Meridian said. She pressed a knuckle to her jaw. "To the thing under the stone. Not woken. Yoked. They wouldn't leave the ground again." Iris crouched. The black cat blinked up at them. Iris thought of the tabby they had buried under the oak, of digging that first hole and crying into it. Every cat here had come through their hands. If Iris got this wrong, the cats stayed collared to a sleeping thing forever. "Then tell me the words," Iris said. "I don't have them. I find graves. I don't wake what's in them." Meridian looked at the tomb. "But the ground here has been answering you for months. Ask it." Iris stood. The idea felt thin. Then the black cat rose, walked three steps toward the tomb, and stopped at a patch of catnip growing against the stone. The leaves held a faint shine, like wet glass in low sun. Iris had not planted it. Other cats drifted over, one at a time, and sat in a loose ring around the patch. The three-legged white one took the center. Iris knelt at the catnip. The smell was sharp and clean. Iris pressed a palm flat to the moss on the tomb. The stone was warm. Under the warmth, something turned over, slow, the way a sleeper shifts before waking. Iris did not speak a rite. Iris spoke the only words they had. "I buried each of you. I'll answer for it." The cats did not move. The catnip brightened once and dimmed. The warmth under Iris's hand steadied and stayed. No lid cracked. No voice rose. But the ground felt different—listening back now, not just listened to. Meridian let out a breath. "You didn't bind them." "Did I wake it?" "You knocked. It heard." Meridian lowered her staff. "It will answer on its own terms. Soon." Iris looked at the small stones, the ring of cats, the tomb. The graveyard was quiet, but the quiet had a shape now, waiting to be filled. Somewhere past the fence a bell rang once and stopped. Iris did not know what would come up out of the ground next, or through the gate, but the choice had been made. The keeper had spoken for the dead in their care, and the thing beneath had marked the voice.