Rowan Switched's Arc

Chapter 8 of 25

Rowan came down the hill path with the deed folded against their ribs. Thorn walked beside them, small and quiet, her wings folded tight. The green lanterns behind them were out. The village lay dark below. Rowan had won the deed, but the deed was skin and ink, and skin burned, and ink washed. Ten nights until the dark moon. Anything could happen to a folded square in ten nights. "You need a place for it," Thorn said. She did not look up. "Not your shirt. Not the cottage. They know the cottage." Rowan already knew. The cottage had the old crib in it, and the crib had been watched for weeks. Anyone could turn the mattress. The deed had to sit somewhere the folk would not touch and thieves would not think to look. Rowan thought of the graveyard patch behind the church, the small one with the child stones and the tin lanterns. The village called it a resting place for lost little ones. No one dug there. Even the folk stepped around it. Iron crosses. Salt in the soil. Names cut deep. They went by the back path. Thorn stopped at the low wall. "I cannot cross," she said. "Iron in the fence. Go. I will wait." Rowan climbed over. The lanterns were lit low. A pale shape drifted between the small stones, no bigger than a child, its face soft and worried. The hill ghost. It had watched Rowan on the path before. It did not speak now. It pointed at a stone near the wall, one with no name, only a carved leaf. Rowan knelt. The earth under the leaf-stone was loose. Someone had turned it not long ago. Rowan dug with their hands until they hit a flat river rock set like a lid. Under the rock was a dry hollow lined with waxed cloth. Empty. Waiting. Rowan understood then that the old woman had prepared this, years back, for something she never named. Rowan wrapped the deed in the linen from their wrist, pressed it into the hollow, set the rock, patted the earth flat, and laid a wilted bell-flower from the next plot on top so the ground would look undisturbed. The hill ghost drifted closer. It touched the stone with one small hand. The carved leaf brightened, then dimmed. A mark set. Rowan felt it in their teeth, a small click, like a lock turning. The deed was hidden and sealed by something older than the folk's watching. Rowan climbed back over the wall. Thorn tilted her head. "Clever," she said. "You used the dead to hold what the living wanted." Her small mouth did not smile. "That counts as spending. Your debt to me grew tonight." She turned and walked into the dark. Rowan stood alone on the back path with empty hands and a colder chest, and nine nights left before the dark moon.