Spore Willowveil's Arc

Chapter 4 of 4

They walked north through thin trees. The hum in Spore's chest stayed steady. His mother's thread pulled like a fishing line. Oliver drifted a step ahead, mushrooms bobbing on his see-through head. Then Spore stopped. The ground in front of him went gray inside his chest, not patchy this time but wide, and moving. "It's coming toward us," Spore said. Oliver looked down at the moss. "I can't see it yet." "I can feel it. It's eating the ground. Fast." Spore pressed the hair in his fist. His mother's thread was still there, but the gray was crawling toward her line in the dirt. If it reached her first, the thread would cut. Oliver floated lower. His feet passed through the moss. "The dead spot is walking," he said. "That's new." "How fast?" "Faster than you." Spore ran. His wings opened on their own and lifted him a hand's width off the ground. He followed them. The trees blurred. He could feel the gray behind him, then beside him, then ahead. It was going to reach her first. He stopped and dropped to his knees. He put the hair on the dirt. He put both palms flat beside it. Then he hummed. He had never hummed this loud where anyone could hear. He kept his eyes shut. He hummed the note the ground had given him back at the library. The note that meant her. Under his hands the dirt warmed. The thread in his chest brightened. He pushed the hum down into the ground toward her, following her line, running ahead of the gray. Oliver hovered close. "Spore. It's here." The moss under Spore's knees began to pale. He felt cold climb his shins. He hummed harder. He felt his mother's thread tug back, once, like she had felt him. Then the thread pulled sideways, quick, and slid out of the gray's path. The cold stopped at his knees. The gray rolled past him and kept west. He opened his eyes. A strip of dead moss ran through the trees like a dry riverbed. His mother's thread was still in his chest. Weaker. Bent. But there. He picked up the hair. His hand shook. "You hummed at the dirt," Oliver said. Quiet. Not teasing. "Yes." "It listened." "She listened," Spore said. "She moved." He stood. His legs felt hollow where the cold had touched them. The pull north was thinner now, and off to one side, farther than before. Wherever his mother had been, she was not there anymore. She had run from the same thing he had. "She knows something's hunting her," Spore said. Oliver nodded. "Then we go faster." Spore looked at the dead strip cutting west through the trees. Something had made it. Something was still making more. He tucked the hair into his leaf shirt, close to his skin, and started walking.