Mr. Echo's Arc

Chapter 10 of 25

Inside the first oaks, Mr. Echo pulled Kate down behind a trunk. The pale woman was north up the trail, still chasing the cat and the dead voice. They had minutes, maybe less. The glade lay somewhere in this stand, but the oaks all looked the same. Nine trunks in a rough ring. One of them hid the true entrance. The other eight opened onto grass where she would find them when she turned back. Kate whispered, "Which one." Mr. Echo shook his head. He opened the box and listened for the shape of the quiet under each tree. All nine sounded the same. Even ground, even air. The warren guides crouched at his knee, ears flat. They did not know either. They had never been this far. He called the ghosts in close. The little girl came first, then the rabbit man and woman, then the pale boy with white hair who had followed them up from the salt line without asking. Ollie. Mr. Echo had not planned on him. The boy stood with his hands in his pockets and looked at the oaks like he was reading a page. "The dead know paths the living can't," Mr. Echo said. "One of these trees is a door. I need which one." The rabbit pair split and walked the ring, passing through each trunk in turn. They came back and shook their heads. Nothing pulled them. The little girl tried and shivered and stepped back. Ollie had not moved. "There," Ollie said. He pointed at the fourth oak from the left. "That one's angry." Mr. Echo looked at him. "Angry how." "Like the argument's still going," Ollie said. "I only know my name when I'm angry. That tree sounds like my name." He said it flat, the way he said everything, and did not look away from the trunk. Mr. Echo pressed his palm to the fourth oak and opened the box against the bark. The quiet there was not even. It bent inward, the way a throat bends around a word held back. A door closing, but from the inside. He signed to the guides. They slipped around the trunk and vanished. He took Kate's wrist and stepped through after them, and the bark gave like a held breath letting go. They came out in the glade. Grass to the knee, a low stone at the center, oaks closed behind them in a full ring with no gap. The pressure in Mr. Echo's ears steadied. Above the trees, the moon's face was still turned north, following a cat that no longer walked. Kate sat down in the grass and put her hands flat on the ground. Mr. Echo looked at Ollie, who stood at the ring's edge with his mouth a little open, listening to something none of the others could hear. The glade was theirs. Only now did Mr. Echo see it held someone already waiting.