Patch's Arc

Chapter 4 of 7

The tapping stopped when Patch stepped into the tunnel proper. Bella set him down. The warm dark smelled of chalk and old milk. Small doors lined both walls, painted with rabbits and moons, and each door hung ajar on a different room. A crib here. A rocking horse there. The passage bent, split, bent again. It was a nursery grown sideways into the rock, and it had no end Patch could see. He pulled the brass compass from his cloak. The needle spun, caught, spun again. Every vent in this place breathed the same soft air. The compass had nothing to bite on. "Bella. Which way is out." She stood in the middle of the hall with her thumb near her mouth. She pulled it down. "I know this place. I think. No. I knew it. It's like a word I had this morning." She looked at him. "I'm sorry. My head is full of soft stuff." The hex. He had cut one ribbon off her wrist in the chamber. Others were still on her, invisible, holding her small. He drew the sword. "Give me your hand." "Patch." "Not to cut you. Hold still." She held out her wrist. He laid the flat of the blade across her palm and pressed his one good eye shut. He thought of the witch who had cried him awake. He thought of Bella at fifteen, sneaking him sugar in the kitchen. He pushed that thought down the steel. Bella gasped. A thread lifted off her skin, thin as a hair, and curled around the blade. Another. Another. Not all of them. Just enough. She swayed and caught the wall. "Oh," she said. "Oh, that's a lot of me." She wiped her eyes with her sleeve. Still wearing a diaper. “Let's name that and move on. Left." "Left?" "Third door past the horse. The one with the moon. There's a stair behind the wardrobe. My aunt used to hide sherry in it." She almost smiled. "The stair, not the sherry." Patch sheathed the sword. The threads on the blade snapped and drifted down like burnt hair. The compass needle steadied and pointed where she had. Patch ran and Bella waddled behind still in her diaper. Past the rocking horse. Past two doors. The third had a moon on it. Inside, a wardrobe stood open, clothes shoved aside. Behind the clothes, stone steps went up. Bella stopped at the first step. Her hand shook on the frame. "Something knows," she said. "Patch. I felt them notice when the threads came off. The rest of them. My school." Above the stair, far up, a bell rang once. Clean. Cold. A calling bell. Patch drew the sword again. "Up," he said. She went up. He followed. Behind them, every small door in the nursery hall clicked shut at the same time.