Rebecka Evertrue's Arc

Chapter 25 of 66

Ninka stayed at Rebecka's hip after Makani left the ring of crystals. The bone bead was still warm in her palm. Rebecka took her daughter's shoulders and turned her toward the light. "You said you felt the string. Can you follow it back?" "To her," Ninka said. "Not into her." "That's enough." Rebecka knelt so their eyes matched. "A doll needs a piece of the person to answer. Hair. Skin. Spit on a rag. I don't have any of that. Without it I can't cut her cord to you. If I try blind, the doll strikes first and it strikes you." Ninka's mouth moved once and stilled. "Then get me a piece." Rebecka looked up. The floating eye hung near the cave roof, blue iris steady on them. She had conjured it a season ago and it had watched ever since. "You. Coast road. Woman with the burned ear, riding with Gran's sister's escort. I need something of her body. Not a name. A thing." "I see her," the eye said. "She rides third. She chews a strip of leather when she thinks. She spat it out an hour ago at the ford." "Where." "South bank. Under a flat stone by the willow root." Lark pushed himself off the wall. He was gray from the crystal shelf. Rebecka held out the last shimmering vial Makani had pressed on her, the recovery draught, and he drank half and gave it back. Color came into his face. "One trip," he said. "The between-road. I can hold it that long." "Go," Rebecka said. He stepped sideways into nothing and was gone. Ninka sat on the cave floor with the dreamcatcher across her knees. The feathers on it stirred though no wind moved in the cave. "She's touching the doll," Ninka said. Her voice went quieter. "My chest feels tight." "Hold the hoop against it." Ninka pressed the crystals to her sternum. Her breathing evened. Rebecka counted. Forty seconds. A minute. Two. Lark stepped back out of the air with a wet strip of leather pinched between two fingers. He dropped it into Rebecka's palm and folded down onto the stone. Makani came fast when Rebecka called. He laid the leather on the hoop between Ninka and the crystal wall. "Same as before," he said. "Name what she wants from you. Give it back." Ninka closed her eyes. "She wants me afraid of her." She opened them. "I'm not." Makani drew a bone knife across the leather. The strip parted. Ninka gasped once and then breathed clean. The eye drifted lower. "She has stopped her horse. She is holding her chest. She is looking at her hand." "She knows," Rebecka said. "She knows," the eye agreed. "And she has turned her horse off the road. She rides alone now, toward this cave, ahead of the escort." Rebecka stood. Two days, not three.