Raven bones's Arc

Chapter 2 of 7

The air had gone thick. Raven took one step toward the thin place in the wall and her lungs seized. Spores drifted off the fungus like gray snow. Each breath pulled them in. She coughed, bent double, and spat. Asher grabbed her shoulder. His own chest hitched. The house with the ravens still leaned far ahead, too far to reach choking like this. "We can't breathe this," she rasped. "We need to cover our mouths." Asher tugged at his jacket collar and pressed it over his nose. It did nothing. The spores slipped through the weave. His red eyes watered. "That won't hold," he said. "It's too fine." Then Raven saw the old woman. She stood on the walk ahead, calm in all that drifting gray. Her hair hung pale and ragged. Bone showed at her wrists and through her thin cheeks. Her dress was printed with red flowers, worn to threads. She did not cough. She did not speak. She only smiled, as if she had watched a hundred children choke here and knew exactly what came next. "Who is that?" Asher whispered. Raven didn't answer. She didn't know. But the woman lifted one bony hand and pointed, slow, at the ground beside Raven's foot. There, half buried in fungus, grew a cluster of broad pale mushrooms with spotted caps. The woman tapped two fingers against her own lips. Then she went still again, smiling. Raven stared at the caps. The woman wanted her to breathe through them. It made no sense. But the spores were winning, and her head had begun to swim. She dropped to her knees and tore one cap free. The underside was dense with fine gills, packed tight as cloth. She pressed it over her mouth and pulled a breath. The air came clean. The gills caught the spores. Her lungs opened. She gasped and the swimming stopped. "Asher, take one." She shoved a second cap at him. He pressed it to his face and his shoulders dropped as the air reached him. They crouched there, breathing through mushroom caps, alive. Raven looked up to thank the old woman. She was gone. The walk stood empty. A crow had landed where she had been. Its breastbone showed white through black feathers, and small flowers grew between the bones, pink and red. It cocked its skull and watched Raven with one bright eye. "That thing has flowers in it," Asher said through his cap. Raven got to her feet. The caps let them breathe now, but her hands shook, and not from the spores. The woman had known. The woman had bones showing, like Raven did. Like Asher did. Whatever had done this to the town had marked the old woman too, and she had stood in the poison air and smiled. Raven breathed through the mushroom and started toward the house. Clean air in her lungs, a flower-boned crow at her back, and one question burning: who was that woman, and what did she know about the thing Raven meant to kill?