Sue vox's Arc

Chapter 6 of 6

The wax on the floor had gone from black liquid to a dull crust. Sue pressed her palm to it. Still warm, but firming fast. Under her hand the shadow shifted, a slow thread testing the edges. When the wax hardened all the way, the seal would crack, and the shadow would slip out through the nearest gleam. She had to move it into the specimen now, while it was still pinned. "Bring me the eye," she said. Theo held out the cracked glass eye. She shook her head. "Not that one. The spare. Second drawer." Theo pulled the drawer and set a fresh glass eye in her palm. It was flawless, no crack, no wear. Sue had polished it for a year. She knelt at the edge of the wax and pressed the clean eye down against the crust, right where the shadow curled thickest. "You mean to make it swap doors," Theo said. He did not soften it. "You don't know it will." "It goes to the brightest surface it can reach," Sue said. "This is the only shine left in the room." The boy crouched by the wall, still catching his breath. His name tag hung by its strip of tape. He watched her hands. "What do I do?" "The lamp," Sue said. "Hold it close to the eye. Make it the one bright thing." He grabbed the lamp and brought the flame near the glass. Light pooled in the clean eye. Sue scraped a thin line through the crust with her knife, opening the wax right beside the shadow. She had to give it a crack to run through, and a door to run to. The shadow found the opening. It poured up through the scraped line and touched the glass. The eye went black, then silver, then black again as the thing fought the walls of it. Sue clamped her thumb over the eye and lifted it from the wax. "Case," she said. Theo slid the specimen's empty socket toward her. She pushed the eye home. It seated with a click. The specimen's face was whole again, both eyes dark and matched. Sue melted a fresh spoon of wax over the flame and sealed the rim of the new eye. She worked slow this time. No cracks. When it cooled she held the specimen to the lamp. The shadow moved inside the glass, small and caught, with no worn seam to press. "It's back in," she said. Her voice shook. Eleven years, and the trap held again. Theo studied the sealed eye. "For now," he said. "You sealed the eye. You didn't fix why it broke." Sue looked at the shelf of broken animals, the flooded floor, the one cracked eye still lying on the bench. The specimen was whole. But the same flaw that failed once could fail again. She had bought time, not the end. And Theo had already opened his mouth about something worse coming.