Raven bones's Arc

Chapter 7 of 7

The dead tree sagged behind them as Raven and Asher started back toward town. The spores had stopped drifting. With the tree's heart gone, nothing fed the rot now. Raven watched the ground as they walked. The fungus that choked the forest floor was browning. Flowers that had grown from bone drooped and curled. The sweet rot smell faded with every step. But where the fungus died, pale bone stayed behind, scattered in the moss. Those would never leave. The infection had stopped spreading. It had not undone what it already took. Halfway back, something moved in the brush. Raven stopped and gripped the bone dagger. A deer stepped out. She knew it. Flowers still hung from its ribs, but they were wilting, petals dropping as it watched her. It did not come closer. It only looked, then turned and walked into the trees, unhurried, like an animal with somewhere safe to go. "It led us to Bob, once," Asher said. He pushed back his sleeve and stared at the bone on his forearm. It had stopped at the elbow. "Guess it's just a deer now." The town gate stood open. The fungal barrier that had sealed them in was gone, dried to gray flakes on the stones. They walked the streets they knew. Flowers climbed the roadside clothing shop where they had hidden weeks ago. It looked clean now, the windows bright. A well-dressed man stepped out front, sweeping the step. Grey hair, grey beard, a neat suit. He looked almost like the hermit from the woods, but calm, like a man who had never gone mad at all. He nodded at them and went back to sweeping. "That's not Bob," Raven said. "Looks like him." "It isn't." She didn't understand it, and she let it go. They came to Raven's street. Her house stood at the end. The fungus that had swallowed it was gone. Flowers grew up the front wall now, pink and open. The lawn was green. The windows were whole. It looked like a place where nothing bad had happened. Raven stood in front of it and could not speak for a moment. "You thought it was gone for good," Asher said. "I did." She looked at her left hand, three fingers still white bone. "Part of me is. Part of the town, too." She thought of the old neighbor who left vegetables on her porch, the one she sat with at the end. The flowers wouldn't bring him back. "But you stopped it," Asher said. "Nobody else gets taken." That was the thing she had wanted. She had hunted the rot across the whole wilderness for this. Now it was done. She looked at Asher, at the silver in his hair, at the bone on his arm that matched her own. He had stood in front of the guardian so she could reach the heart. He had not asked why. "You didn't have to come to the tree with me," she said. "I know." "Why did you?" He met her eyes. He didn't look away, the way he usually did. "Same reason you pulled me out of that plant." He stepped closer. For once he didn't pretend. He knew how she felt. He had always known. He leaned in and kissed her, there on the green lawn, in front of the house that had come back from the dead. When they parted, Raven caught movement across the street. An old woman stood on the sidewalk, watching them. Raven knew her too. She had shown them the pale mushrooms to breathe through, then vanished into a crow of bone and flowers. She looked different now. Her hair was soft greyish white, swept up. She wore a pale gown. The bone still showed at her wrists, but she looked whole, and well, and glad. She smiled at Raven like she had known the ending all along. Beside the woman stood the deer. Its flowers had fallen away. Its fur had grown back over the bone. It leaned against her, gentle, and she rested a hand on its neck. Neither of them seemed caught between living and rotting anymore. They had crossed over to the right side of it. Raven understood then what the dead tree had given back. Not her fingers. Not the people she buried. Those were gone, and bone stayed bone. But the town could breathe. Asher would stop at the elbow and never spread further. The deer could be a deer. The woman could smile. Raven slid the bone dagger into her belt and took Asher's hand. She had gone into the woods to kill the thing that broke her home. She had done it. Now she stood on her own green lawn, half girl and half bone, and for the first time in months, she had nowhere left to hunt.