Meridian Gravesight's Arc

Chapter 6 of 6

By full daylight the stranger was awake again, and worse. She sat with her back to the church wall, hands pressed flat to her ribs. Her jaw kept working sideways, like she was chewing something she couldn't spit out. Meridian's back teeth pinged every time the woman moved. The spirit under her skin had learned the shape of her now. It was digging in. "How long since it climbed in," Meridian asked. "Two days. Maybe three." The stranger's voice cracked. "I can feel it counting my breaths." Meridian brought her inside the nave and laid her on a blanket by the record player. Luna was on shift at the guitar, feeding the tone that kept the well sweet. Jade slept in a pew. Riley Crash sat cross-legged on the floor, brushes across her knees, watching. "The brush didn't call it out last night," Meridian said. "It's rooted. If we can't move it by evening, her mind goes." Riley Crash looked at the woman on the blanket. "Then we don't ask it. We push it." "Push it with what." "Bass. Low enough to shake bone. Spirit rides bone. You shake the bone, the spirit lets go." Luna kept playing but tilted her head. "Thorne's asleep in the vestry. Wake her." Riley Thorne came out with her bass already slung, hair flat on one side. She heard the plan in three sentences and nodded once. "Need something to catch it when it comes out. Bass alone will scatter it. Scattered is worse than stuck." A small dry voice spoke from the doorway. "I can hold a loose sound." Meridian turned. The sound fairy stood at the threshold, wings folded tight, dark robe dragging the stone. She had drifted in during the night with the last of the spirits and stayed. Melody Resonance. She had not spoken until now. "Hold it how," Meridian said. "In my mouth. Until you find its ground." Meridian's teeth throbbed. She trusted the ache more than she trusted any plan. "Do it." Thorne set the bass low and slow. The first note walked up through the flagstones into the stranger's spine. The woman arched. Riley Crash caught her shoulders and held her down. Thorne dropped a step lower. The stranger's mouth opened wide. Something pale and thin came out of it in a slow ribbon. Melody stepped in and closed her lips around the ribbon like drinking from a cup. Her small chest swelled. She held. The stranger went slack. Breathing. Whole. Meridian's teeth pointed hard, past the church wall, out toward the old orchard slope. A grave waiting there, sixty steps off, unmarked. She grabbed her coat. "Walk with me," she told the fairy. "Don't swallow. Don't cough." Melody nodded, cheeks full, eyes wide. Meridian led her out into the sun with a spirit held between a stranger's teeth and a fairy's.