Sassy's Arc

Chapter 4 of 5

The seeker sat in the dirt with empty eyes. Her body breathed, but no one lived behind her face. Sassy held her hand and felt how far she had drifted. He needed a safe place to shelter her while he worked to call her spirit home. Out here she was open to anything. The market was loud, the ground cold. He looked around for walls, a door, any roof. A compact shopfront stood near the stalls. Old newspapers filled one window. Tobacco tins lined the other. A striped awning hung over the door. Sassy lifted the seeker and carried her toward it. The door was locked. He set her down on the step and knelt beside her, out of ideas. "You can't leave her open like this," said a low voice. Big Lez crossed the dirt in his pink tank top, arms already moving. He had watched Sassy quiet the tree. He had vouched for him to the opossum. Now he crouched at the seeker's other side. "Somewhere the wind can't touch her. That's your job now." "The door's locked," Sassy said. Lez pushed a garden box against the shopfront wall. It brimmed with leafy plants, tall stems and soft green leaves. "Put her behind this," he said. "Cover on one side. Wall on the other. Best you'll get." He worked fast, dragging a second box to close the gap. Sassy laid the seeker in the narrow shelter. For the first time the wind missed her. Sassy leaned close and studied her face. "Come back," he whispered. "Drop by drop, I'll wait for you." He watched her breath. Her eyes stayed empty. Then her fingers gripped his wrist hard. Her back went stiff. Her eyes snapped wide. She looked straight at Sassy, awake and sharp with fear. "It followed me," she said. Her voice shook. "From the deep water. It's coming." "What's coming?" Sassy asked. "Something with no face." She clutched his arm harder. "Stars inside it. It reached for me. It knows the door you opened." Lez rose to his feet. His jaw tightened. He looked out past the stalls, then back at Sassy. "I've seen what gets forgotten," he said quietly. "When something old goes missing, worse things come to fill the gap." He did not say more. He never did. The air changed. A cold pressure pushed through the market. Merchants went silent. The garden box leaves trembled without wind. Far off, between the carriages, the light seemed to bend around a shape that should not be there. The seeker's spirit had not come back. But something else had followed her body out of the trance. Sassy had wanted her sheltered. Now she was awake, terrified, and pointing at a thing walking toward them through the stalls.