Mr. Echo's Arc

Chapter 5 of 25

The Bunnyman led them down into the hollow. Mr. Echo carried the box under one arm. Kate walked behind him with the salt pouch open. The three elders waited in a shallow ring of scraped earth, ears low, eyes fixed on his mouth. He opened his mouth to greet them and stopped. He had no word they would know. His voice would land on them like a stone thrown into a pond they did not swim in. He knelt and set the box down. The little ghost girl drifted to his shoulder. The rounder hooded ghost hung back at the rim. The girl had helped him once already. She could not help him now. The elders were awake, listening, and any voice that came from the box would be his voice, not theirs. He needed a Bunnyman voice. He did not have one. Kate crouched beside him. "Play them something," she whispered. "Anything they know." He spun the reel back. He had scraps left from the hill and the trail. A snatch of rain. A branch cracking. And under those, faint, the tapping the Bunnyman had made on the box lid two nights ago, when it first agreed to trust him. One tap. Two taps. A pattern. He had recorded it without meaning to. He set the reel to that spot and pressed the lever. The box gave out the taps. One. Two. One. Two. The elders' ears rose together. The Bunnyman at the rim stepped forward and tapped the dirt back. One. Two. The nearest elder crossed the ring and put a paw on the box. Mr. Echo stayed still. The elder tapped once on the wood. He tapped once back with his knuckle. The elder tapped twice. He matched it. The little ghost girl watched from his shoulder and did not move. The rounder ghost drifted closer. The tapping went on for a long minute, back and forth, the elder setting the pace, Mr. Echo answering. No word was spoken. No word was needed. The elder lowered its paw. It turned to the other two and made a soft sound in its throat. They answered the same way. Then the first elder faced Mr. Echo again and tapped three times, slow and even, on the wood. A yes. Kate let her breath out beside him. The Bunnyman came down from the rim and stood at his side. It pointed north, past the hollow, toward the far dark where the ground climbed again. The glade. The elders had heard him. They would send guides. They would not send them yet. One of the elders lifted a paw and drew a shape in the dirt. A circle. Then a line across it. A closed door. It tapped the line twice, hard. Something was in the way. Something the warren feared more than they feared him. Mr. Echo looked at the shape and understood. The petition was won. The road was not.