Kate Bush's Arc

Chapter 12 of 21

Will's eyes were open and steady, but his mouth would not move. Kate knelt by the stone and put her hand over his. His fingers closed on hers. She wanted to ask him a hundred things at once. How do we get past her. What did you learn up there. What killed you. Nothing came back. His throat worked and made no sound. The pale woman had kept his voice, and the salt had sealed both the real and the stolen. He would not speak again tonight. At the edge of the ring, between the fourth oak and the fifth, the pale woman stood. She did not step in. Her white feet stopped at the roots. Kate understood then that the glade held her out, the way salt held a door. But the ring would not hold forever. Above the oaks the moon was low and full, and its light lay flat across the grass. Kate remembered the salt line they had crossed. She remembered what Mr. Echo had said about who watched them cross it. "She's waiting for the moon to move," Mr. Echo said. "When the light shifts, the ring thins. We have maybe an hour." Ollie stood on the far side of the stone. He was looking at Will, not at the pale woman. "He can't tell you," Ollie said. "He can't tell anyone. That's how it works now." He said it flat, the way he said hard things. Then he added, quieter, "But Lily can hear him. The dead hear each other. My sister heard me in the trees before she knew her own name." He looked at Kate. "Let her listen." Lily was sitting against the stone with her knees up. She had not spoken since they came through the oaks. Kate went to her and asked, plain, if she would try. Lily nodded once. She crawled to Will and put her ear against his chest, over the cat. She stayed there a long time. The rabbit ghosts watched. The collie lay down. Kate counted breaths she did not need to count. Then Lily sat up. "He says the swallow," Lily said. "Night flight. He says you already have the answer. He drew it for you before." She frowned, listening again. "He says her name is what she eats. Say it loud and she chokes. He doesn't know the name. Only that it's hers." Lily's mouth pulled tight. "That's all he has. He's tired." Kate sat back on her heels. She had the swallow drawing folded in her coat, creased soft from three days of carrying. Night flight. A name she did not know, spoken loud enough to choke a mouth that ate sound. She looked past the stone to the white figure at the roots of the fourth oak. The moon behind her had begun to move.