Orin Wanderwood's Arc

Chapter 3 of 26

Orin came down off the rise with the plum twig against his chest and the butterfly a slow pink drift ahead of him. The mist closed again below the orchard. He watched the butterfly's wingbeats. They were slower than before. It rested on a dead reed, opened its wings once, and almost did not open them again. Orin understood then that it was tiring. When it stopped, whatever thread it was drawing home would stop with it. He did not know which way home was. He had turned too many times in the Fen. The butterfly knew, or something in it knew, but the butterfly was dying in his sight. He tried to walk faster to keep it moving, as if his steps could push it forward. It only sank lower. It landed on his knuckle and stayed there. A voice came from his left. "It won't last." The ghost girl from the orchard stood in the reeds. She was small and pale and barefoot. She looked at the butterfly on his hand. "I've seen them go out. They go out fast at the end." Orin held the twig tighter. "Then tell me the way." She shook her head. She did not know. But she said there was a boy who might, and she called for him without raising her voice. A second ghost came through the reeds, gray-sweatered, hands in his pockets. He looked at the butterfly and then at the plum blossoms in Orin's fist. "Break a blossom," he said. "Feed it the smell. They follow what they remember." Orin pinched one blossom off the twig and crushed it against his thumb. He held it under the butterfly's feelers. The butterfly's wings twitched. It lifted, dropped, lifted again, and began to move. Not fast. But it moved with purpose now, in one direction, low over the black water. The ghost boy walked beside Orin for a while and then stopped. "That's as far as I go," he said. "Keep feeding it." Orin walked. He broke blossoms one at a time. Each blossom bought him a stretch of ground. The butterfly held its line. The reeds thinned. The mud went firm. He heard, faint and behind him, the long-eared thing moving through the reeds, and then a woman's voice further off, and then boots. A girl stepped out of the mist ahead of him with a knife at her belt and a hood pulled low. She was not a ghost. She was breathing hard. She looked at the butterfly, and at the twig, and at his face. "You're the boy from the notices," she said. "I'm Marrow. I've been looking for someone who came out of the Fen alive." Behind Orin, the butterfly settled onto the last blossom on the twig and folded its wings for good. The trail was gone. But he was standing on hard ground, and someone living was standing with him.