Kate Bush's Arc

Chapter 16 of 21

The jar with Will's hum sat cold against Kate's ribs. Outside the ring, the wet grass had stopped moving. The thing that had come for his voice was gone west. But the sky at the edge of the oaks was turning gray, and the salt line was thinning where the moon had crossed it. Kate looked at her brother on the stone. He could not walk. He could not speak. If they stayed until sunrise, the glade would open and the pale woman would come back through it. "We carry him now," Kate said. "Down the north side, before the ring breaks." Mr. Echo lifted his brass needle and watched it settle. "The glade holds another twenty minutes. After that, the oaks are just trees." He looked at Will. "He can't be dragged. His form will tear." Marrow came in from the salt line. She had mud on her knees and a coil of rope over one shoulder. "I cut poles on the way up," she said. "Two straight ones by the fourth oak. We tie a sling." She did not wait for an answer. She went back out and came in with the poles and started knotting her coat sleeves between them. Kate tore her own coat down the seam and tied it across. The collie stood at Will's feet, watching the work, ears forward. The two ghost rabbits stepped in on either side of the stone and laid their thin paws on Will's shoulders to hold him steady while Kate and Marrow slid the sling under him. Will's eyes tracked Kate. His mouth moved. She read it: go. She shook her head. "Not without you." She tucked the jar of his hum into the sling against his chest, next to the black cat, who had not moved from his heart. "Hold these. Both." They lifted. Will weighed almost nothing. Mr. Echo took the front poles, Kate the back. Marrow went ahead with a fresh pouch of salt, drawing a line as they walked. The fourth oak was already softening at its edges, bark going pale like breath on a window. Kate stepped through it fast. The other oaks blurred behind her. She heard the ring close, then heard it stop being a ring at all. They came out on the north slope in early gray light. The glade was gone. Behind them the hill was just hill. The collie ran ahead and stopped where the trail bent down toward the pass. Marrow crouched, listening. "Nothing on the wind," she said. "Yet." Kate set the poles down. Will lay in the sling with the jar under his hand and the cat on his chest, breathing. They were off the peak. He was still whole. But she carried his voice in glass a second time, and the pale woman knew every step they had taken north.