Mr. Echo's Arc

Chapter 11 of 25

The glade held its breath around them. Kate sat in the grass with her hands flat. The warren guides pressed against Mr. Echo's boot. At the ring's edge, Ollie swayed. His outline had thinned since they stepped through the oak. Mr. Echo could see the far trunks through his shoulder now. The pale boy was fading into the glade's air, and he was the only one who could read this place. Mr. Echo opened the box and held it near Ollie's chest. The quiet around the boy was wrong. It pulled inward, the way a throat bends around a word held back. The same shape as the oak door. The glade was drinking him. Ollie's mouth moved but no sound came. His hair lifted in a wind none of them felt. "Say your name," Mr. Echo said. Ollie's lips shaped it. Nothing left them. The sealed jar in Mr. Echo's coat had held the boy's name once, on the salt line, when the Fen tried to take it. He pulled the jar out now. The stopper was still tight. He set the jar in the grass at Ollie's feet and cracked it a finger's width. A thin sound came out. Two syllables in a child's voice. Ollie. The boy heard it and his edges pulled back toward solid. The ghost rabbits stepped in on either side of him, ragged and stoic, and set their spectral hands on his shoulders. The little ghost girl took his wrist. Their older quiet braced against the glade's pull. It was not enough. The jar's sound was thinning already. Kate stood up. She walked to Ollie and put her palm flat on his cheek. "Your sister is Lily," she said. Flat. Plain. "She found her body. She's breathing again in the chalet. Your brother Will helped her. Will is my brother." Ollie's eyes found her. "He's alive. Changed, but alive. You did that. You went into the Fen with her because Will told you to." Mr. Echo watched the shape of the quiet around the boy change. Kate's words were plain facts, and facts had weight the glade could not eat. Ollie's outline firmed. His hand closed on Kate's wrist. The jar in the grass went silent, empty at last, but the boy stayed. He drew a breath he did not need and let it out. "The stone," Ollie said. His voice was his own. He pointed at the low stone at the glade's center. "That's where they were driven from. The path in starts there. I can hear it now." The warren guides lifted their ears. Mr. Echo closed the empty jar and put it away. Above the oaks, the moon's face had begun to turn back south. She had lost the cat. She was looking for them again. But Ollie was anchored, and the glade had opened its first door.