Mr. Echo's Arc

Chapter 18 of 25

Longear led them up out of the burrow at first light. The tunnel opened onto a low ridge of packed dirt, and Mr. Echo stood there with the hum-box heavy against his hip and understood what he had not let himself think about since the glade. He had the map. He did not have a way to send it home. The elders back at the warren were waiting on word he could not give. If he walked the Fen for another week, they would count him lost and scatter before he returned. His whole path forward depended on a message he had no runner to carry. He set the box down and opened it. Kate crouched next to him. Clover and Longear watched from the ridge. The warren guide who had come with them from the oaks stood with both ears forward, listening for anything that was not them. "I need to send back," Mr. Echo said. "To the elders. Before they break camp." He looked at the guide. "You would take three days to reach them. I do not have three days of you." The guide tapped the lid of the box, the pattern Mr. Echo had taught the first Bunnyman in the woods. Then the guide tapped their own chest. I will go. I will carry. Mr. Echo shook his head. "Not you. The box." He looked at Longear. "You said your feet were done with west. Would they walk east?" Longear's ears turned once. She did not answer. He kept going. "I can put the path inside. Every turn you gave me. The dandelions, the pale blooms, the leaf-bed, the butterflies. I put it back in your voice. You carry the box to the elders. They open it. They hear you. They wait." Clover spoke before Longear could. "She walked three days to be gone. You are asking her to walk three days back with a stranger's errand." Longear put her scarred paw on Clover's arm and Clover stopped. Longear looked at the box, then at Mr. Echo. She said, "I will carry it as far as the oaks. From the oaks the guide runs it in. My feet stop at the oaks." Mr. Echo nodded. He copied her map out of the box into a second, smaller reel, and pressed the original shut around her voice and the tapping pattern and one clear sentence from him: "A safe path exists. Hold the warren. Wait." He handed the box to Longear. She tucked it under her cloak. She and the guide left down the ridge without ceremony. Kate watched them go until the ridge folded them out of sight. Mr. Echo stood on the empty ground with the small reel in his palm and no box around it. He had sent his map home in another creature's mouth. He had kept only a copy, and no case to hold it, and the Fen still ahead of him waiting to eat whatever he could not protect.