Rowan Switched's Arc

Chapter 18 of 25

Rowan reached the low wall of the animal graveyard before noon. The flask sat warm against their ribs. The deed lay hidden under a nameless stone inside the wall, sealed there by the hill ghost weeks ago. Rowan had planned to slip in at dusk on the final night and lift the stone alone. Now they crouched at the gap in the wall and saw two watchers walking the far hedge. One carried a lantern. The other carried nothing, which was worse. The village had learned the graveyard mattered. Rowan went home the long way. In the cottage, the old woman's ghost rocked in her chair. Her jaw hung open. Her hands lay flat. Rowan could not ask her for counsel. That memory was gone. Rowan set the flask on the table and pressed both palms against the wood until the shaking stopped. A knock came at the shutter. Not the door. The shutter. Rowan lifted the latch. The red-haired singer stood there with her instrument on her back. Behind her, small and quiet in the grass of the meadow patch, stood the dark fairy in the torn cloak. Rowan had met the fairy once in the mushroom hut. The fairy did not enter. The singer did. "Elspeth sent word," the singer said. "Watchers on the graveyard. You cannot walk in tonight." She set a coil of thin rope on the table. "You do not walk in. You send someone the watchers cannot see." Rowan looked past her to the fairy in the meadow. The fairy shook their head once. "Not me," the fairy said. Their voice was small and flat. "Iron in that ground. I would burn." They pointed at the rocker. "Her." Rowan turned. The old woman's ghost had stopped rocking. Her empty sockets faced the door. Rowan understood. The dead could pass a wall the living watched. A ghost carrying nothing living would draw no eye. Rowan knelt by the chair and said the old woman's given name aloud, the one carved in the headboard upstairs. The ghost stood. Her weight left the wood. She walked to the door and waited. They went at moonrise. Rowan and the singer stopped at the tree line. The fairy stayed farther back. The ghost crossed the field alone. The watchers turned their heads and did not see her. She passed through the wall. Rowan counted forty breaths. She came back with the deed folded flat between her palms, dry, unbroken. She placed it in Rowan's hand and did not go back to the chair. She walked past Rowan toward the hill path and did not stop. Rowan held the deed and the flask together against their chest. The ghost was spent. The chair at home would sit empty now. One night remained. The deed was in Rowan's hand, and the last voice that had raised them was walking away for good.