Lilly nun's Arc

Chapter 2 of 5

The night after Tomas went home hollow, Lilly knelt by the well and felt the floor shift. A low pull rose through the stone, like a stomach turning. The creature below was waking. It was hungry, and she did not know what it ate. Guess wrong, she sensed, and it might taste her first. She lit a candle and set a dead field mouse on the stone lid. An offering. A test. The pull did not ease. If anything, it grew. The lid grew cold under her palm. The hunger wanted something the mouse could not give. "That won't feed it." The voice came from the corner. A girl stood there, see-through, her white hair wild, her red eyes flat. Lilly's candle flame did not bend toward her. No chill came off her. Lilly knew the face from an old photograph in the schoolhouse records. A woman who had lived here years ago and vanished. The village said she asked too many questions. "You're dead," Lilly said. "Yes. I asked what you're asking now. It cost me." The ghost, Tavi, looked at the well without fear. "That thing eats what the tree eats. Not meat. It eats what makes a person a person." Lilly's hands went still. The tree had taken Tomas's curiosity. His questions. It had left him smiling and empty. "The tree feeds it," Tavi said. "They share one throat. Give the tree a trait, and the well is fed. That's the only safe way. Feed it any other way and it takes you." Lilly understood. She looked at the covered tree against the wall. Then she went to the shelf and took down a small carved toy, a blue monkey with webbed feet and two antennae tipped in blue. A child had left it years ago. A thing full of wonder. She did not know why her hands chose it. She only knew the hunger pulled toward it. She uncovered the tree. The green eyes glowed. She held the little monkey up before them. The blue vines brightened. The carved mouth seemed to breathe in. The antennae on the toy dimmed, then dulled to gray. Something left it. Lilly felt the pull travel down through the floor, into the well. The cold on the lid faded. The hunger settled, fed and quiet. "It worked," Lilly whispered. "For now." Tavi did not smile. "Every feeding wakes it more. You've fed a thing that will want bigger meals. First toys. Then animals. Then the children with your bracelets on their wrists." Lilly covered the tree. Her heart pounded, but not with fear. With certainty. She knew how to feed it now. She knew the price, and the price was not hers. The seal felt thinner under her hand than before. The next feeding would loosen it further. She looked at the gray toy in her palm and already knew it would not be enough.