Madame Celeste Gearhart's Arc

Chapter 16 of 24

The pirates left before noon. Celeste heard their boots pound down her dock and their engines pull away across the water. She stayed still until the sound faded. Then she gripped the ghost-silver wire in her fist. It ran from her hand, through the tree's roots, down into the black lake. Below, under a lily pad, her totem held a hundred spirits alone. She had crammed them all into one vessel and never tested it. Now the cottage was hers again. Now she had to learn if it would hold. She waded into the shallows and pulled the wire hand over hand. The totem rose from the mud, wrapped in oilcloth, dripping. She cut the rope and peeled the cloth back. The resin flower still glowed in its chest. But the coiled vial along its side pulsed too fast, brightening and dimming like a heart under strain. The silver rock in its belly ticked. The whole totem trembled in her hands. The dead pushed against their cage, and the cage was bending. Celeste carried it up into the workshop and set it on the bench. She turned the valve half a notch, easing the sap's pull on the crowded spirits. The trembling slowed. She spoke low. "Sleep. Stay bound. Answer only me." The vial steadied. The ticking evened out. It was holding. The totem now carried her whole army in one body, and it obeyed. A shadow fell across the round window. Celeste turned. A peg leg thumped on her dock. Mei-Ling Chen stepped through the open door, one eye sharp under her captain's hat, her sword still sheathed. Celeste had destroyed her boat as a warning once. Mei-Ling had promised to return knowing exactly what the totem could do. Now she stood in the workshop and looked at the glowing thing on the bench with a slow, hungry smile. "So the pirates missed it," Mei-Ling said. "They dug in your mud and found nothing. But I know you, witch. You never leave your prize far from your hand." Celeste set her palm flat on the totem's head. "You saw what one command did to your boat. This holds a hundred spirits now. One word from me and they tear through this room." She was not certain the strained vessel could survive that. She said it anyway, and kept her hand steady. Mei-Ling studied the fast-pulsing vial. She had learned to read the totem too well. "It's overfull," she said. "You've bound too many. It's close to breaking. I don't need to fight you. I only need to wait until it bursts, and then I collect what spills out." She stepped back onto the dock and settled against the rail, patient. "I'll be watching the lake, Celeste. Every hour it strains, you weaken. And I have all the time you don't."