Orin Wanderwood's Arc

Chapter 8 of 26

The constable's ink was barely dry on the struck line when Orin followed Kate back to her door. Marrow stayed a pace behind, watching the street. Mr. Echo waited at the step with the white rabbit at his boot. He did not look at them. He was looking past the last houses toward the trees where the Fen began. "They ran," Kate said, unlocking the door. "Lily found her body. They ran for the pass. I don't know which way they turned after." Inside, Kate spread a rough map on the table. Three trails left the Fen's edge. She could not point to one. "The pale woman uses my brother's voice now," she said. "If she calls them, they'll answer the wrong way." Marrow set her knife on the table. "We pick a road and we're wrong two times out of three. Wrong once and they're dead." Mr. Echo came in then. He carried a small tin cone wired to a copper coil. He set it on the table beside the map. "I don't hear sound," he said. "I hear where sound stops. The pale woman is a hole. Wherever she walks, sound goes missing. I can follow the hole." He held the cone over the map and turned a small screw. The coil ticked. He moved the cone north, along the pass road. The ticking slowed. He moved it east, along the low trail through the alders. The ticking stopped. He held it there. "Here," he said. "Sound is thin on this line. Something is eating it as it walks." Kate leaned close. "That trail runs past the old shed. The tin roof." She looked at Orin. "Rain covered us there once. If Lily heard my brother's voice on the road, she'd go toward it. That's where the voice would lead her." Marrow was already pulling her pack from the wall. "Then we go now. On foot we lose. We need the cart." Orin took the painted panel down from the shelf without asking. The dark swallow under the thin moon. He put it in his coat. "For her," he said. "If she's forgetting, I'll show her something her brother kept." Kate did not stop him. She took the map and folded it small. Mr. Echo wrapped the cone in cloth. The rabbit went to the door and waited. They took the east trail before the sun dropped. Mr. Echo walked ahead with the cone in his hand, listening for the shape of what was missing. The ticking grew slower with every mile. Orin kept his hand on the panel in his coat. He did not know if they would reach the shed before the pale woman did. He knew, for the first time since Copsefire, which way to run.