Will bush's Arc

Chapter 12 of 26

Will stood in his solid body and looked down the slope. The chalet sat far below, a gray square in the morning light. Between him and Kate lay the whole hill. He had one day, maybe two, before his hands went thin again. He did not know the way. He had come up as a dead thing, drifting through places a living body could not cross. A living body needed a path. Marrow crouched beside him and drew a line in the dirt with her knife. "North pass is quickest. It's also where the pale one walks." She drew a second line, longer, curving east. "The stream cut. Slower. Wet. No open ground." She looked up. "You pick." Mr. Echo shook his head. "North pass will kill him. She listens for a body on that ridge." He tapped the brass box at his hip. "I can bend sound once more today. Not twice. If we meet her, I want the charge saved for her, not a slip on wet stone." Will looked at the two lines in the dirt. He thought of Kate at the window, hand pressed to the glass. He thought of her climbing in February to a peak that held nothing. "Stream cut," he said. "I don't need fast. I need to get there." Marrow nodded once and stood. She pulled a dandelion from the moss, blew the seed head clean, and let the filaments drift down the slope. They pulled east on a low wind. "Wind's with the cut," she said. "Good. Kate will smell woodsmoke before she sees you. Don't call out. She has to see you first, or the pale one hears her answer." Behind her, the small ghost girl stepped out of the ferns, barefoot, watching Will's solid hands. Marrow saw her and softened her voice. "She'll walk ahead. She sees the ground I can't. If she stops, we stop." They started down. Will's bad leg took the weight and held. The ghost girl went first, small and pale between the trunks, pointing when a root ran wrong or a stone sat loose over air. Marrow moved behind her, knife out, reading the dirt. Mr. Echo came last with the box. Twice the ghost girl raised a hand and they froze while something large moved through the brush above them. Twice she lowered it and they walked on. By midday the pines thinned and Will could see the chalet roof through the branches, closer now, close enough to count the shingles. Marrow stopped him at the tree line. "That's as far as I go. Uncle's rule." She pressed the empty flask into his hand. "Show her this if she doesn't know you. Tell her a girl in the reeds carried you." Will closed his fingers around the glass. Down the slope, a door opened. Kate stepped out with a bucket. She had not looked up yet. Will started walking.