Lilly nun's Arc

Chapter 5 of 5

The pocket of bracelets did not last the night. Lilly woke to a sound under the floor, a low grinding of stone on stone. She came down and knelt by the lid. The stone was warm. Not cold, not frosted. Warm meant hunger, and this hunger had come too fast. She had fed it only yesterday. Now it wanted more already, and she had nothing prepared. The floor shuddered. A crack ran from the lid toward the wall. If she did not feed it, the creature would break the floor itself, and the whole village would see. She uncovered the tree. The green eyes lit. The blue vines woke along the bark. She pulled a bracelet from her pocket and raised it to the carved mouth. The wood breathed in. The reeds went gray. The pull dropped through the floor. The grinding softened, then rose again. One was not enough. She fed another. Then another. The crack kept widening. "It won't stop," said a voice behind her. Tavi stood near the wall, white hair wild, red eyes flat. The ghost had warned her for weeks and Lilly had fed the mouth anyway. Now Tavi only watched. "You fed it too often," Tavi said. "It grows the way a fed thing grows. Bracelets won't fill it now." Lilly reached for another. Her hand closed on empty cloth. The pocket was bare. The last gray reeds lay on the floor. The grinding climbed toward a shriek. The crack reached the wall and split the plaster. Then something soft brushed her leg. A warm light moved across the boards. A dog stood in the room, pale and glowing, its coat the color of morning. She had seen it before, waiting near the children at lessons, keeping close to the little ones. A loyal thing. It pressed its head against her knee the way it once pressed against theirs. "Don't," Tavi said. She stepped forward for the first time in weeks. "That one guards them. It's the last thing that does." Lilly looked at the dog. It did not pull away. It carried devotion, and devotion was a trait, and the mouth in the wood ate traits. She took the dog's head in both hands. "Lilly. No." She lifted the spirit toward the carved mouth. The dog did not fight. The tree breathed in. The warm light stretched, thinned, and poured into the wood. The glow went dim, then gray, then gone. The pull dropped through the floor. The grinding stopped. The crack held where it was. The lid frosted over and went still. Lilly stood alone in the quiet. The thing below was fed, deeper and stronger than before. The seal lay thinner than ever. And the last guardian of the children was gone, eaten to keep the floor whole one more night.