Jack Timber's Arc

Chapter 5 of 5

The wolves came down the slope in a loose line. Six of them, eyes empty as knotholes. Gareth loosed his last arrow and dropped one. The others did not slow. Jack backed toward the fallen pines, the chipped axe in both hands. Gareth drew a short knife. His shoulders were shaking under the cloak, and his amber eyes had gone brighter than they should be. "Get to the graveyard," Gareth said. His voice was wrong now, thicker in the throat. "The ghost girl. Her ground is old. Wolves can't cross it." "You're coming." "No." Gareth showed his teeth again, and this time they kept coming, longer than a mouth should hold. "Run, Timber. Now." Jack ran. He heard something behind him tear out of a cloak and hit the ground on four legs. He heard a snarl that was not a wolf's snarl. He did not look back. The graveyard fence rose out of the mist at the bottom of the slope. Crooked headstones. Carved pumpkins burning low. Jack vaulted the iron rail and landed hard on the flagstones. Two wolves hit the fence behind him and stopped as if they had struck a wall. They paced along the iron, heads low, and would not step through. Seraphine was already waiting between the graves. Bare feet on cold stone. Pale hair moving in air that wasn't there. In her hands she held a heavy book, its cover green and gold, its lock hanging open. "You cut them all," she said. Not a question. "All three. The roots should die now." "They will." She looked past him at the wolves on the fence. "But the trees had a keeper. Something under the grove. It won't die because the trees did. It's climbing up through the roots now." Jack lowered the axe. "Tell me you know how to kill it." She opened the book. The pages turned by themselves, stopping on a spread of tight, crooked writing. Her finger hovered over a line. "The dead here remember it," she said. "They say its name was buried with a smith. The one who built the iron man. If we dig up that grave, the answer is in the box he was put in." A long howl rose from the ridge. Not a wolf. Something bigger. Jack thought of Gareth on the slope and did not let himself think further. Heavy footsteps came up the graveyard path. Flint Grimshaw stepped through the gate, amber eyes burning under his helm, a shovel in one gauntlet and a hammer in the other. Pumpkin rivets glowed along his plates. He had heard the trees fall from the forge. "Where," Flint said. Seraphine pointed to a sunken grave under a leaning marker. The name on the stone had been scratched out. "There," she said. "Your maker." Flint did not move for a long moment. Then he set the shovel in the dirt and pushed.