Rowan Switched's Arc

Chapter 10 of 25

Rowan came down from the ridge with the three notes locked behind their teeth. The deed was buried, the sound was learned, and eight nights remained. But the path home passed the old stone wall at the edge of the village, and Thorn Nightwhisper was waiting on top of it. She sat with her bare feet against the vines, swinging one heel. Rowan stopped in the road. Thorn's debt was due before the dark moon. Rowan had nothing to give her that would not cost the ritual itself. "You've been busy," Thorn said. "Graveyard. Ruins. A pool." She counted on her fingers. "Each one a spend. My ledger is full, Rowan." Rowan asked her price. Thorn dropped from the wall and landed light. She said she wanted the sound. The three notes. To hum them once into her palm before the dark moon, and the debt would close. Rowan understood the trap at once. A sound spoken twice was a sound halved. If Thorn held the notes in her hand, she could sell them, trade them, breathe them at the wrong hour and void the deed from a mile away. Rowan said no. Thorn smiled and named a second price: the milk tooth. Rowan said no again. The tooth was the refusal itself; without it there was no bargain to seal. "Then a memory," Thorn said. "The old woman's voice. The last thing she told you before she died. I take it clean. You keep the shape of her, just not the sound." Rowan thought of the ghost in the cottage, the cracked record, the name of Selene Nightshade she still needed to remember why she trusted. A memory was not the ritual. A memory was only Rowan. Rowan said yes before the fear could catch up. Thorn stepped close and set two fingers on Rowan's temple. It was quick. A small pull, like a splinter drawn. Rowan felt the old woman's face stay, and her hands, and the smell of her shawl. The words she had spoken on the deathbed went flat and silent, a mouth moving with no sound behind it. Rowan knew there had been a voice there once. Rowan could no longer hear it. Thorn stepped back and licked her fingers. "Paid," she said. "Clean." She walked into the dark of the trees and did not look back. Rowan stood alone on the road. The debt was closed. The deed was safe. The three notes were still theirs. But the deathbed was quiet now, and Rowan would go the rest of the way to the dark moon without the old woman's last instruction to check against. Seven nights. Rowan started walking, and did not try to remember what could not be remembered.