Madame Celeste Gearhart's Arc

Chapter 15 of 24

The reservoir hummed heavy and cold on the bench. Celeste pressed her palm to the brass drum and felt the dead crowd inside it. A hundred spirits, bound and ready. But the fleet was near. She had heard their engines on the water at dawn. If they landed and took her cottage, they would take the drum too, and an army with it. She could not fight them. She could not run with it strapped to her back. She had to hide the prize where no pirate would think to look. She stood at the round window and stared at the swamp. Below spread a vast lake dotted with broad green leaves, each pad wide as a boat. The water beneath them was black and deep. No man searched under a lily pad. No pirate dove into swamp mud for treasure. The lake would swallow the drum and give it back only to her. But spirits could not sit loose in cold water. They would scatter the moment they left the brass. Celeste crossed to the totem. The resin flower glowed in its chest. The silver rock gleamed in its belly. The coiled vial along its side pulsed with light. She turned the valve at its base and opened the totem to the reservoir. "Take them," she said. "Hold them. Sleep." The drum shuddered. Spirit by spirit, the dead poured from the reservoir into the totem. The vial along the totem's side brightened until it burned like a lantern. The gears at its base clicked faster. Celeste watched the sap and core drink the whole army down. The finesse she had built held them steady. No surge. No overload. When the drum fell silent and empty, the totem stood swollen with power, hot to the touch. Now only the totem mattered. One thing to hide, not two. Celeste wrapped it in oilcloth and bound it with rope. She carried it down through the tree's hollow roots to the water's edge. She waded to the nearest floating leaf and lowered the bundle beneath it, letting the black water pull it down. Ghost-silver wire trailed up from the mud to her hand, thin and cold. Through it she still felt the totem below. It answered her from under the lake. She climbed back into the tree as the engines grew loud. Bootsteps thudded on her dock. Fists struck the door. Voices called her out. Celeste sat by the empty bench and folded her hands. Let them search. They would find a cottage, a workbench, a witch with nothing. The prize lay drowned under a green leaf, still bound to her, still hers. But the totem now held every spirit at once. The reservoir had spread the load. The totem held it all alone. She had hidden the army. She had also strained the vessel that carried it, and she could not test it now, buried under black water, with pirates at her door.