Petra Voss's Arc

Chapter 3 of 4

Petra set the mud-sealed lunchbox on her counter beside the thrashing turtle. The shell was slick and dark, ridged like old bark. She raised her mallet, then stopped. She did not know where to strike. Hit the wrong ridge, and the shell would crack wrong. The entity would spill free and take her. She lowered the mallet. She needed to read the shell first. A small voice spoke from the doorway. "You'll do it wrong." Petra turned. The trembling girl from the schoolhouse stood there, braids damp, knees bruised, hands shaking at her sides. Abigail. She had followed Petra through the dark. She stepped inside without being asked, the way a child does when she has stopped fearing a scolding. "Ms. Fitch sent you," Petra said. "No." Abigail's eyes darted to the turtle. "She never lets me leave. But I've watched her seal things. I know how they weaken." Her voice trembled, but her words did not. "The seal isn't in the shell. It's under it." Petra frowned. "Show me." Abigail crept close. She pointed a shaking finger at the turtle's rear plates, near the tail. A pale shape clung there, half-hidden in the mud crust. A salamander, gut-white, sinuous, pressed flat to the shell. Its damp skin pulsed with a faint glow. Petra had thought it a smear of algae. It was alive. "The seal breathes through it," Abigail whispered. "Strike the plate under the salamander. That's the soft spot. That's where the mud can't hold." Petra studied the creature. It clung exactly where the shell dipped, where the ridges thinned to a seam. The girl was right. The salamander marked the weak point like a finger on a wound. "If you're wrong," Petra said, "it takes me." Abigail's tremble worsened. "I'm not wrong. I've watched four years of things break loose." Her bruised knees shook. "Please. Do it right. So I know it can be done right." Petra slid the lunchbox flush beneath the turtle's rear plates. She lifted the mallet. The turtle heaved. The salamander clung on. Petra breathed once and swung. The mallet struck the plate under the pale creature. The shell split along the thin seam, not the wrong ridge. A dark thing poured out, screeching, thin as smoke, reaching for Petra's face. It never reached her. It dropped into the open tin. The mud-crust seams flared, then hardened. The lid snapped shut on its own. The box went still and heavy in her hands. The turtle stopped thrashing. It lay empty, a hollow husk. The salamander slid off the dead shell and vanished into a floor crack. Petra breathed out. The relic sat inside the broken shell, small and cold. She had caught the entity. She had freed the relic at last. Abigail did not smile. "Now Ms. Fitch will know I left," she said. And she looked at the door as if it might already be watching.