Iris Meadowrest's Arc

Chapter 3 of 4

Iris slept badly and woke before dawn. The knock had gone into the ground, but a knock was only a knock. If Iris left it there, the thing beneath the tomb would sink back into sleep and forget the voice that reached it. Iris needed a thread to hold between them—something the entity could follow up when it chose to rise. Iris pulled on boots and went out to the graves. The cats were already waiting near the oldest tomb. The three-legged white one sat on the moss. The sweet black cat crouched by the catnip patch against the stone. The catnip's leaves held that faint wet-glass shine again, brighter now, small purple blossoms open though it was not their season. "You brought me a thread," Iris said to the cats. Iris knelt and touched the shining leaves. They were warm. "Won't hold on its own." Iris looked up. A boy stood at the edge of the plot, gray sweater, white hair, hands in his pockets. Iris had seen him drift through the fence once before and let him pass. A ghost boy who kept to the far stones. Iris did not know his story. "You've been here," Iris said. "I watch." He nodded at the catnip. "That's a door, not a rope. You need something that stays." A girl in a white nightgown stepped out from behind the yew. Bare feet. Hair like pale water. She looked at the tomb, not at Iris. "He's right," she said. "Voices go. Names hold." "I don't know its name," Iris said. "Give it yours," the girl said. "Names travel down." The boy went still. His hands came out of his pockets. "Don't say your own name into a sleeping thing. It'll wear it." "Then what," Iris said. He crouched by the catnip. "Bury something you cried on. That's a rope. It knows the salt." Iris thought of the tabby under the oak. The first grave. Iris had cried into that soil until the dirt was mud in their palms. Iris walked to the oak, knelt, and dug with bare hands into the loose earth over the tabby. Iris took a handful up, carried it back, and pressed it into the catnip patch at the base of the tomb. The leaves darkened, then held their glow steady. The warmth under the stone rose to meet Iris's palm and did not fade. Something below took hold of the salt in the dirt and kept it. "Tethered," the girl said. She was already turning to go. The boy stood. "It'll come up now. Not today. But it won't drift." "When?" Iris asked. "When it's ready," he said. "And it'll bring what it's been holding." He walked past the black cat and was gone at the fence. Iris stayed by the tomb. The cats did not move. Under the stone, the sleeper had a rope now, and a keeper on the other end of it.