Josie Tanner's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

For twenty-two nights Josie Tanner buried the same grave, and for twenty-two mornings she found it clawed open again. She was a witch, and all she wanted was sleep. The nightmares came every time she closed her eyes, so she had been brewing a draught strong enough to drown them. But she could not brew. The grave would not stay shut, and a witch does not rest while the dead walk her ground. She worked by lantern now, shovel biting wet earth. Her coat hung heavy with mud. Her black cat watched from a leaning headstone, balanced neat on three legs. She patted the last mound flat and leaned on the handle, swaying with exhaustion. A low growl rose behind her. She turned. The thing stood at the edge of the lantern light. A hound, but wrong. Its hide had rotted back to bare bone along the ribs and legs. One eye burned green. Dark fluid dripped from its jaw. It had dug up her grave every night, and now it faced her. Josie lifted the shovel. The hound did not lunge. It whined, low and raw, then scraped a paw at the fresh dirt. It looked at her. It scraped again. "You keep opening it," she said. "Why." The cat dropped from the headstone and padded between them, unafraid. It sat beside the hound and stared up at Josie, as if waiting for her to understand something plain. She lowered the shovel. She knelt and pressed her palm to the grave. She reached, the way her grandmother taught her, past dirt and into the cold below. The grave was empty. She had been burying a box of bones that did not belong to anyone. The hound was not digging to feast. It was digging to find something that was not there. "He's not in here," she whispered. "Is that what you've been trying to tell me." The hound sank down. It laid its ruined head on the dirt and went still. Josie sat back. Twenty-two nights of fear, and the creature had only been grieving. Someone the hound had loved was buried somewhere else, under the wrong stone, unmarked. Until she found the true grave, the hound would keep coming, and she would keep not sleeping. She did not fill the hole again. There was no point. She rose on shaking legs and looked across the dark rows of stones, hundreds of them, most without names. The cat trotted ahead toward her crooked little house, where dried herbs hung by the door and the window still glowed. Her cold kettle waited inside. The draught could wait one more night. "All right," Josie said to the hound. "Show me where he really is." The hound lifted its head. It turned and limped into the dark between the graves. Josie took the lantern and followed.