Void's Arc

Chapter 4 of 7

Void found Holli waiting at the shipwreck three days after the east wing. He had told her only that the last attempt failed and that Mary had almost died. Holli listened without interrupting, then walked him along the tideline until they reached the broken hull. Salt water pooled inside the ribs of the ship. She pointed at a dark shape half-buried in the sand beneath it. An old iron anchor, wrapped in coral and lichen, its shank thick as a man's leg. "Bind to that," she said. "Not to a person. Your hunger wants a source. Give it something that cannot bleed." Void crouched beside the anchor and pressed his palm to the iron. It was cold and did not move. He had read the ritual text a hundred times and never once considered a non-living vessel. The text assumed a willing anchor because willingness was thought to hold the binding steady. Holli's argument was simpler. The anchor had held ships against storms for a century. It had already survived worse than him. He looked up at her. "If the hunger tears through it, the backlash comes to me." "Yes," she said. "That is why I will be here. I will call you back the way you called me back." They drew the pentagram inside the hull where the wood curved up like a ribcage. Void set the black knife at the center and knelt with the anchor on one side and Holli on the other. He cut his palm and let the blood fall onto the iron. The hunger rose fast, searching, and this time it did not turn inward. It struck the anchor and coiled around it. The iron did not flinch. The coral around its base cracked. Void felt the hunger pull hard, testing, looking for softness, finding none. His vision narrowed. He heard Holli speak his name from a long way off. She said it again. He followed her voice back into his body. When he opened his eyes, the chalk still glowed faintly, and the anchor was warm. Holli helped him sit up. His hand was closed around a length of iron that had not been there before, a small piece broken off the anchor's shank, fused smooth by the binding. He could feel the hunger inside it now, pressing against the metal like a fish against glass. Contained, but awake. "It holds," he said. Holli nodded once. Then she said, "For now. Iron rusts. Coral breaks. You bought yourself a leash, not a cure." Void closed his fingers around the shard. The hunger pushed back, steady, patient. He understood then that he had not solved anything. He had only found something willing to carry the weight while he learned how to end it.