Ollie tembers's Arc

Chapter 3 of 5

Ollie followed the bootprints through the alders until the lantern light steadied ahead. Two people crouched near a fallen log. A man in a dark coat held a brass box that ticked in short bursts. A woman in a red dress poured a thin line of salt across the mud. Ollie stopped ten paces off. His voice had come back at the trail. He needed to keep it long enough to ask one question. "I need your help," he said. The words came out. Then the Fen went soft around him, the way it did before a silence, and the next word he tried died in his mouth. He felt it happen. His name, which he had almost held a moment ago, slid back under the surface. The woman looked up. She looked straight at him. She did not flinch. "There's one here," she said to the man. "By the log." The man tapped the brass box. "Reading drops when he tries to speak. The quiet is eating it." He set the box on the ground and slid a sealed jar toward Ollie across the moss. "Talk into this. It holds what the hill takes." Ollie knelt. He opened the jar. He tried to say his name and got nothing. He tried again and heard only the shape of his own breath. He thought of the boy whose hand he had held for days. He thought of the girl with the paper bird. He thought of how angry he had been the last time he was sure. He clenched his hands until they hurt. He shouted into the jar. Not the name. Just sound. A long, hard noise that scraped his throat raw. Then, under it, one word came up whole. He said it. He capped the jar fast. The woman took the jar from his hands. She held it to her ear, then to the man's box. The box ticked steady. "Ollie," she read off the dial. "It says Ollie." He sat back in the moss. He had it. He had heard someone living say it. But between the two birch trunks behind them, a shape stepped forward on long legs. Tall. Dark. Ears like a hare's cut against the mist. It had followed the shout. It was looking at the woman now, not at him. Somewhere past the alders, a dog began to bark, close, running hard toward the light.