Lilly nun's Arc

Chapter 4 of 5

The next morning Lilly waited at the schoolhouse door, but no children came. She walked to the farmhouse at the meadow's edge, timber walls gold in the early light, and found one small girl on the porch steps. The child wore the braided reed bracelet Lilly had made her. She did not move toward the teacher. She stared past Lilly at the empty air. "Come to lessons," Lilly said. "The dead girl told me not to." The child pointed at nothing. "She says you want to feed me to the thing under the floor." Lilly turned. Tavi stood in the yard, white hair wild, red eyes flat. The ghost had never left the schoolhouse before. Now she stood in the open, between Lilly and the child, doing the one thing she claimed she could not do. Warning. Acting. "You followed me," Lilly said. "I can't touch her." Tavi's voice stayed level. "But she can hear me. One of them can. So I'll tell every house. I'll stand in every yard. No child crosses your door again." Lilly understood then. By nightfall the parents would ask why their children feared the schoolhouse. They would come with lanterns and pry up the floor. The seal was too thin to survive that. Tavi did not need to touch anything. She only needed to be heard until the village did the digging. Lilly knelt. She took the child's wrist and worked the reed bracelet loose. The girl let her. The dull reeds slid into Lilly's pocket, warm from the small skin. "Give it back," the child said. "No." Lilly stood. "Go inside. Forget the dead girl." She walked back to the schoolhouse alone. Tavi followed, silent now, watching the bracelet in Lilly's fist. Inside, Lilly uncovered the tree. The green eyes lit. The vines brightened along the bark. She held the child's bracelet before the open mouth in the wood. "Don't," Tavi said. "That's not yours to give." "It carries her. That's enough." Lilly watched the stone lid. It was not cold yet. She did not wait. She pressed the bracelet to the glowing mouth. The tree breathed in. The reeds went gray. Something left the sleeping child far across the meadow, pulled through the braid and down into the wood. The pull dropped through the floor. The lid frosted, then stilled. The child on the porch would wake tomorrow and not remember any dead girl. Her fear was gone. So was whatever had let her hear Tavi at all. Lilly turned to the ghost. "You can only reach the ones who listen. So I'll take the listening out of them. One bracelet at a time." Tavi did not answer. For the first time, she stepped back. The seal held. The village stayed home. And Lilly held a pocket full of bracelets she had not yet fed to the mouth in the wood.