Meridian Gravesight's Arc

Chapter 5 of 6

Meridian met the woman at the churchyard gate. The stranger's jaw was locked tight. Her eyes went past Meridian to the grass, where the eleven waiting spirits had become fourteen. Then fifteen. A new one rose out of the ditch behind her while they stood there. "They're following me," the woman said. "I walked from the low road. They kept stepping out of the hedges." Meridian's back teeth throbbed. Not one clean ache. A dozen small ones, layered, from every direction at once. The consecrated ground was pulling them faster than she could place them. Inside, Jade's guitar held the tone steady over the record. That kept the well sweet. It did not settle spirits. Only Meridian could do that, and only one at a time. She counted again. Seventeen now. Dawn was maybe five hours off. At her best pace she settled one spirit every twenty minutes. She would lose half of them to the village before sunrise, and a loose spirit in a farmhouse would bring men with torches faster than a sour well. She sent the woman inside to sit against the wall. Then she went back through the nave. Luna was awake, boots up on a pew, tuning by ear against Jade's chord. "I need them held in place," Meridian said. "All of them. Until I can walk each one down." Luna looked at the door. "How many." "Seventeen. More coming." "Record's busy keeping the well." Luna swung her feet down. "Second source. Different note. Something that grabs and doesn't let go." Riley Crash was already standing. "Low end. Slow. I can do it on the kit if someone gives me a floor tom and a brush." "You have sticks," Luna said. "Sticks are wrong. Brushes drag. Drag holds." Meridian pulled a stiff hearth broom from the vestry and cut the straw down with her knife. Riley took the two stubs, sat behind the drum Jade had hauled in on the first night, and started a slow sweep against the head. The sound was not loud. It moved along the ground like water finding a low place. Meridian walked out into the field. The spirits had stopped drifting. They stood where the brush-sound reached them, tilted toward it, waiting. Her teeth still ached, but the aches held still now. Each one a pin she could find again. She worked through the night. One spirit. Then the next. Luna took over from Jade at the guitar. Riley kept the brush going, hands slowing, then speeding, then slowing again. By the first gray light Meridian had settled twenty-two. None had reached the village. She walked back to the church. The stranger was still against the wall, asleep now, jaw slack. Meridian's teeth ached in a new pattern — deeper, further off. Something under the woman's ribs. A spirit she had carried in with her, riding closer than skin, that the brush had not called out.