Jack Thompson's Arc

Chapter 9 of 25

The whistle outside grew louder. Amelie didn't wait. She herded the children down the back steps to a tall carved gate set in her garden wall. To Jack's eyes it looked like an alley mouth — dark, sour, full of trash. To her, it bloomed open on a small stone cottage ringed with flowers and soft light. She hurried the children through the threshold one by one. Amelie pulled the gate shut behind them and turned the lock with an ornate key. The metal sang once and went quiet. She pressed the key into Jack's palm and folded his fingers over it. "Take this to 13," she said. "Tell him to use it on the clock tower door at the end of the street. That becomes the new way out." Jack looked at the key, then at her. The dice were still warm in his other hand. He wanted to ask about the bridge, about Blackjack, about everything she'd promised to teach. The whistle blew again, closer. He found 13 in the hall, third eye closed now, Friday coiled back inside. Jack held up the key. "Clock tower. Now." They moved. Boots through the broken doorway, down the cracked walk, past fences and shuttered windows. The tower loomed at the street's end, clock face cracked, door pale with age. Jack slid the key in. It turned like it had been cut for the lock that morning. The door opened onto green light and the smell of wet grass. Small faces looked up from inside the cottage beyond. Jack let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding. The children were through. The promise was kept. Now he could turn back to the dice in his pocket, and the bridge he'd only just learned to cross.