Victor Grimholt's Arc

Chapter 8 of 9

The quiet in the house held for two days. On the third, Lunella woke at dusk with her eyes fixed on the shutter, and Victor felt her small body stiffen against his coat. She was not crying. She was listening. He carried her to the basket and rocked her with the flat low sound she trusted now, and after a long while she slept. He set the leather hare beside her hand. Then he pulled on his oilcloth and stepped out into the wet dark. The woman at the treeline had watched for weeks. Tonight he meant to end it. He found her where Rhys had said she would be, past the yard, near the emerald crayfish statue that rose green and glowing above the moss. Its light fell on her hood and on the cracked leather of her boots. She did not run. She stood with her hands open at her sides, palms out, the way a person shows a butcher she carries no knife. "Theresa Giovanni," Victor rasped. She flinched at her own name. "You left her on my step. Now you watch my window. Speak plain. Why are you here." Theresa's mouth worked before the words came. "I had a vision," she said. "Before she was born. I saw her grown, and the thing that came for her, and the only house where the door held. It was yours." She swallowed. "I could not raise her past what I saw. You can. I did not leave her because I did not want her. I left her because I did." She reached into her coat and drew out a folded cloth, small, stained at one corner. "Her birth cloth. Her true name is written inside. Keep it or burn it. She is yours. I came to be sure the door was holding. It is." She held the cloth out under the statue's green light. Her hand shook. "Take it. Then I go. I will not stand in your trees again." Victor took the cloth. It weighed nothing. He put it in the inner pocket of his coat, against the ribs, where he kept things he did not want the rain to reach. "You will not come back," he said. It was not a question. Theresa shook her head. "Not while she needs the door to hold." She pulled the hood forward and turned and walked into the wet dark, and the moss closed behind her boots. Victor stood under the statue until her footfalls thinned to nothing. He did not open the cloth. He walked home. Lunella slept on in the basket, one fist curled around the hare's ear. He sat by her and put his hand flat on the coat pocket over his ribs and felt the small square of cloth there, and the fear he had carried without naming lifted, and a heavier thing settled in its place. He was, now, the only door.