Mr. Echo's Arc

Chapter 4 of 25

The Bunnyman led them along a low ridge until the ground softened underfoot. Mr. Echo felt the trail thin again, not from silence this time, but from the Bunnyman's own slowing. Kate walked at his shoulder. Ahead, the woods opened around a cherry tree in full bloom, out of season, pink against the gray trunks. The Bunnyman stopped at its roots and turned. It tapped the box once. Then it pointed past the tree, where the ground dipped into a hollow. It shook its head. It would go no further with him. Mr. Echo understood. The warren was down there. The elders were down there. A stranger walking in unannounced would be driven off, or worse. He needed to give the Bunnyman something to carry back. Proof he meant no harm. He had no words the elders would trust and no gift he could name. He knelt and opened the box. The reels inside were nearly empty. He had spent the true sound days ago. He had spent the warren-at-ease already. What he had left were scraps caught on the way in, and one thing he had not meant to keep. A pale shape drifted out from behind the cherry tree. Not the woman from the peak. Smaller. A child in a plain white dress, barefoot, her hair the color of paper. Beside her hung a second ghost, rounder, softer, a drifting hood shape with wet eyes. Both watched the box. Mr. Echo had recorded them by accident, two nights back on the hill, when the device caught what his ears could not. They had followed the sound of themselves ever since. "You can speak to him," Mr. Echo said to the little girl. He set the box down between the Bunnyman and the ghosts. "He hears animals. He'll hear you." The girl knelt by the box. Her mouth moved. No sound came for Mr. Echo, but the Bunnyman's ears both swung forward and stayed. The rounder ghost hovered close and touched the reel with one soft edge. The box hummed. From it came a picture in sound, the shape of children playing under a tree, the shape of a warren no one had hurt, the shape of Mr. Echo kneeling and not moving when he could have. The dead spoke to the animal in a language the living did not own. The Bunnyman listened for a long minute. Then it tapped the dirt twice, hard, and slipped down into the hollow alone. They waited under the cherry tree. Petals fell on the box. Kate did not speak. The two ghosts drifted at the edge of the clearing, quieter now, as if lending them had cost them something. When the Bunnyman came back, it was not alone. Three older shapes stood behind it at the rim of the hollow, long ears low, watching Mr. Echo. One of them raised a hand. The warren had agreed to hear him. The glade was still far, and the elders had not said yes to anything else. But the door was open.