Maddie Brightwell's Arc

Chapter 3 of 4

Dawn came gray. Maddie stood on her porch with a canvas bag on one shoulder and the golden vessel wrapped in a dish towel under her arm. Tank sat at her feet, watching the tree line. Credence had not slept. They stood in the yard where the flowers were still bent flat and said, "We walk. Keep the bottle covered. Don't ask questions where the trees can hear." They walked for an hour before Credence stopped at a break in the pines. A woman waited there, dark-skinned, in a pale dress printed with brown leaves. Her ears came to soft points. She held a strip of birch bark in one hand and turned it over like she was reading it. "My wife," Credence said. "Nadiya. She hears the woods. She'll tell us what you woke." Nadiya did not greet Maddie. She looked at the towel-wrapped bottle. "Uncover it." Maddie unwrapped the vessel. Light leaked through the cloth. Tank flinched. Nadiya crouched. She held the birch bark near the glass and closed her eyes. A long minute passed. When she opened her eyes, she looked at Credence first, not Maddie. "It's not one thing," Nadiya said. "She pulled a piece of the sun down. Something under the ground felt the pull and reached back. It's old. It's hungry. It thinks the bottle is a door." "A door to what," Maddie said. "To more sun." Nadiya stood. "Every spell you cast now, it will feel. If you try another light spell, you don't fill a bottle. You open the door wider." Maddie's hand tightened on the vessel. The blister under the linen throbbed. "So I stop casting." "You stop casting light," Credence said. "Until you know the shape of what's on the other side. You almost called it into your kitchen last night because you didn't know it was listening." "Then teach me the shape of it." Credence and Nadiya looked at each other. Something passed between them that Maddie could not read. "We take her to the water," Nadiya said. Credence nodded once. They walked another mile. The pines opened onto a ring of pale crystal standing around a clear pool. Willows leaned over the water. Mist drifted along the surface. Maddie had never seen the place before, though she had lived one valley over her whole life. "Kneel," Nadiya said. "Hold the bottle above the water. Don't drop it. Don't speak." Maddie knelt at the stone rim. She held the vessel out. In the pool, the reflection was not hers. A long shape moved under the surface, wider than the pool should allow. It had no face. It turned toward the bottled light and stopped. Maddie saw it see her. She saw it wait. "Now you know," Credence said behind her. "You carry it with you. Every step. That's the cost of what you did." Maddie pulled the vessel back against her chest. Her hands were steady. She had a name for the thing under the water now, even if it was only fear.