Kate Bush's Arc

Chapter 7 of 21

Kate ran until the trees thinned and the ground turned to loose stone. Lily kept pace at her side, one hand still locked around her own wrist. Ollie ran ahead with the collie. The mist did not thin with the trees. It thickened. And behind them, closer now, the voice that sounded like her brother called her name a second time. Kate, wait. It was Will's voice. It was not Will. She knew the trick. The pale woman had used his voice once before, at the chalet door. Kate had learned then not to answer. But now another voice called from her left, softer, cracked at the edge. Katie. He had only ever called her Katie when he was scared. Her feet slowed before she told them to. Ollie turned back. Don't, he said. It's her. Kate looked at him and then at the mist. Two voices. One ahead, one behind. Both were her brother's. She could not tell which one was borrowed and which one was left. She pulled a pouch from her coat and tore it half open. Then she stopped. Salt would break the sound. Salt would silence both of them at once, the fake and the real, and she would never know which had been which. She held the pouch shut in her fist. A black cat stepped out of the mist onto the stones in front of her. It sat down and looked up the slope, ears forward, tail curled. It did not look at Kate. It looked past her, at the voice behind. Its fur stood up along its spine. Then it turned its head the other way, toward the softer voice on the left, and its ears flattened. It stood, walked three steps toward the left-hand voice, and stopped. It waited. Ollie whispered, the dead talk to animals. Follow it. Kate followed the cat off the path, into low brush. The softer voice did not call again. It did not need to. The cat led her ten steps and stopped at a hollow under a leaning rock. Something crouched there. Long ears, wrong shoulders, a shape she had seen in the trees before. But its eyes were her brother's eyes. It lifted one hand. The fingers were his. It could not speak now. It had used its voice up warning her. Behind them, back on the path, the false voice screamed her name in fury, and the sound cut off flat, as if a door had shut. Kate knelt in the wet leaves in front of the shape that had been her brother. Will, she said. He nodded once. Above the ridge, the moon showed her face through the mist and watched them without moving. Kate understood then that the pale woman knew exactly where she was, and that Will could no longer run.