Roxanne DeMarco's Arc

Chapter 4 of 7

The maker's name was signed on the paper in Roxanne's hand. She read it aloud in the ruined workroom, and Lady Moon flinched at the doorway. "You know this name," Roxanne said. The gray woman said nothing. So Roxanne folded the diagram, wrapped the cold dress, and followed her down the hill to a small dark house she had never seen. Pale moons ringed its stone front. A crescent hung carved above the door. "She lives here?" Roxanne asked. "Not the maker," Lady Moon said. "The one who taught her." The door opened before Roxanne knocked. A small woman stood inside, white hair to her feet, blue eyes flat as stone. She did not look surprised. She looked at the bundle in Roxanne's arms, then at Lady Moon behind her, and her mouth went thin. "You brought that to my door," the small woman said. Her voice cut clean, no waste in it. "Take it back." "I need the maker," Roxanne said. "Her name is on the diagram. She tied a knot only she can loose." "She's dead," Selene said. "Years now." Roxanne's stomach dropped. The whole plan hung on a living hand or a living voice. "Then the last name stays trapped forever." "I taught her the knots," Selene said. "I did not teach her to steal a moon-walker's name." She looked past Roxanne at Lady Moon. "That one has hunted her own name across the dead for a hundred years. She led you to me because she thinks I owe her." "Do you?" Roxanne asked. Selene stepped back from the door. "Come in. Bring it." Inside, crescents hung on every wall. Selene set a bowl of salt on the table and took the wrapped dress from Roxanne without gloves. She unfolded it. The pin at the collar caught the lamplight, dark and cruel, its stones like drops of blood. "A maker's hand can free her name," Selene said. "So can the hand that taught the maker. The knot answers to the lineage, not the person." She traced the last symbol at the collar. "I can do it. Once." Roxanne's breath came fast. "Then do it." "Not for nothing." Selene's eyes went to Lady Moon in the doorway, still unable to cross. "When her name comes loose, it does not float home. It comes to the hand that frees it. I will hold it." She looked at Roxanne. "And a held name is a leash. You want me to free her. I want to own her." Lady Moon spoke from the threshold, low and hard. "No." Roxanne stood between them, the cold dress on the table. She had come to free a name. Now the only hand that could do it wanted the name for itself. She could untie every dead name in the dress with the diagram alone. Lady Moon's last knot needed Selene. And Selene's price was a chain. "I need to think," Roxanne said. "Think fast," Selene said. "The dress is waking."