Selene Nightshade's Arc

Chapter 4 of 6

The next night Selene came back to the basin and found the little ghost girl already there, but not alone. The round hill ghost floated at her shoulder, and behind them stood a taller shape she had not seen before: a gray-robed woman with long pale hair. The woman did not speak. The little girl looked up and said the hill wanted to talk. Selene understood. The debt had come due. The round ghost drifted close to the basin. It said the hill had lent her nights, and carrots, and dried flowers, and a guard at her grave. It said the count was full. If she could not pay by moonrise tomorrow, the guard would leave the grave. The pull would take her back. The basin would go untended. The ritual would end with the moon still half-bright in the sky. Selene knelt in the wet grass. She had nothing. Her name was ground off stone. Her deed sat behind a door she could not touch. She said so, flat, to the three of them. The gray-robed woman spoke then. She said her name was Elspeth Moonwhisper. She said she was bound the same way Selene was: by a thing left undone. She said the hill would take a promise in place of coin, if the promise had weight. A smaller ghost came up out of the grass beside Elspeth. A boy in a torn sweater, white hair, dark eyes. He did not look at Selene. He looked at the basin. Elspeth said his name was Ollie. She said he had forgotten his own name once and was afraid to try it again. She said if Selene would carry his name for him, hold it steady until he was ready to speak it, the hill would count that as payment. A held name was worth a night, she said. Worth four, if held clean. Ollie finally looked at her. He said, "You keep it. Don't say it out loud. Not until I ask." Selene said she would. He leaned in and whispered two syllables into the space where her ear had been. She felt them settle in her chest like a small warm stone. A pale owl drifted down from the wall and landed on the basin's rim, watching. The little girl smiled for the first time Selene had seen. The round ghost dipped, satisfied. Elspeth said the debt was cleared through the last night of the ritual. She said the guard would stay. She said nothing else, and turned, and was gone. Selene looked into the basin. The moon in the water was thinner still, a curl of silver on black. Three nights left. The breathing under the twin towers went on, slower now, or she had grown used to it. She had bought her nights again, and this time not with anything the hill could grind away. She had bought them with a boy's name, and she meant to keep it.