Orin Wanderwood's Arc

Chapter 10 of 26

They ran across the field with the shed roof shining ahead. Kate had Lily on her hip. Marrow held the panel under one arm and her knife in the other hand. Orin looked back once. The pale woman walked. She did not hurry. Every step she took, the crickets went out around her like snuffed candles. The shed was still a hundred yards off. Lily's head bumped against Kate's shoulder. Kate was slowing. They were not going to make it. "Stop," Orin said. He grabbed Kate's sleeve. "Keep going. I'll slow her." Marrow turned back with him. "Two is better," she said. Kate did not argue. She ran on with Lily toward the tin roof. Mr. Echo stayed a moment, pressing his cone toward the field. The needle inside had gone flat. "She eats sound," he said. "So give her too much of it to swallow." He pulled a small tin from his coat and pressed it into Orin's hand. "Firecrackers. From the new year. All I have." Then he ran after Kate. Orin and Marrow stood in the wet grass. The pale woman was forty yards out. Her hair moved without wind. Her mouth opened, and Will Bush's voice came out of it, calling Lily's name soft and close, as if from behind Orin's ear. Lily's cry answered from Kate's arms. She twisted to look back. "Cover your ears," Marrow said. She struck a match on her belt. Orin held the tin open. She lit the whole bundle of firecrackers at once and threw it low across the grass at the pale woman's feet. The field cracked open with noise. It was not the small popping of a festival. It was one long tearing sound, dozens of shots at once, hammering the air. The pale woman stopped. Her head jerked sideways. The stolen voice broke off mid-word. She lifted both hands to her face and the field kept ringing. Orin felt the shots inside his chest. He grabbed Marrow's arm and they ran. Behind them the pale woman went to one knee in the grass, still covering her ears, the silence around her filling with sound she could not eat fast enough. They hit the shed door and Kate slammed it behind them. Rain started on the tin roof, soft at first, then heavy, drumming everything else out. Lily sat on the floor with the painted panel in her lap, breathing hard. Marrow bolted the door. Mr. Echo pressed his ear to the boards and listened. "She stopped," he said. "She's still out there. But she stopped." Orin knelt beside Lily. His hands were shaking. Outside, past the drumming rain, the field was quiet again in the wrong way. They had bought the shed. They had not bought the road home.