Rowan Switched's Arc

Chapter 5 of 25

Rowan left the cottage before the wick burned down. The wrist under the cloth still throbbed. The tooth still sat under their tongue. The hill path waited, but Rowan turned back into the cottage first. To bargain on the hill they needed the crowned woman's true name, and the ghost in the rocker had refused to say it. There was one place left to look. The old woman had kept a locked cupboard behind the crib. Rowan had never opened it. The rocker moved when Rowan stepped inside. The ghost sat in it, thinner than before, jaw bare to the bone. Rowan knelt and pried the cupboard board loose with the graveyard nail. Inside sat a black record and a silver machine covered in runes. Dust lay thick on both. The record's label read The Changeling in small gold letters. Rowan lifted it out. The surface shifted colors under the candle. "She hid that from you on purpose," the ghost said. "Play it and you'll hear what she couldn't say aloud." Rowan set the record on the runed player. The needle dropped. A hum filled the room, low, then a woman's voice cut through it, clear and clipped. Not the old woman. A stranger. She said her name was Selene Nightshade and that she had been erased once too. She said she knew the crowned woman by another name, a name the folk had cut from every stone the way her own had been cut. She said the name plainly. Two syllables. Rowan mouthed them and the salt on their tongue stung. The voice said more. It said the crowned woman took children whose mothers owed her land. It said Rowan's true name was on a deed the crowned woman kept under the hill, in a room the dead could not enter. It said, "Say her name on the hill and she will answer as an equal. Do not ask for kindness. Ask for the deed." Then the needle lifted on its own. The record cracked down the middle with a sound like ice. The ghost's mouth stayed open. "That was the last of her," she said. "Selene spent herself on you. Don't waste it." The rocker stopped. The shape in it thinned until only the dress hung on the wood. The candle went out. Rowan stood in the dark cottage with the crowned woman's name held under their tongue beside the tooth and the salt. The wrist throbbed against the iron. Ten nights remained. The hill path was still open. Rowan stepped out the door and started up the slope, saying the two syllables in their head, over and over, so the glamour on the hill could not scrub them clean.