Will bush's Arc

Chapter 15 of 26

The green was gone from his hands. Kate stood a step back with her palms still raised where his chest had been. The peach tree threw shade across them both. Will could see the trunk through his own wrist. An hour had passed. He had counted it. Now the count was done. "There might be another," Kate said. She did not sound like she believed it. "Marrow's uncle. The satchel had one flask. Maybe he has more." "He doesn't," Will said. "She told me. That was the last of the green." He tried to sit on the step and his weight would not hold. He knelt on the boards instead, careful, as if the wood might notice. Kate knelt with him. She did not try to touch him again. She had learned the rule fast. The black cat came out from under the fence and sat by Kate's knee. It watched Will the way it had watched him for months, as though he were solid. Kate put her hand on its back. "Tell me what happens now," she said. "Plain." "By dark I won't be able to speak," Will said. "By morning I won't be here." Kate nodded once. She did not ask him to lie about it. He was grateful. He looked at the yard. The collie lay in the sun by the pump. A dandelion had gone to seed by the fence post. He remembered her blowing seeds through the window at the chalet. "I want to try something," he said. "Not the flask. Something smaller." He told her about the seed head. He told her the dead could push a small thing if a living hand carried it first. Kate walked to the fence and picked the stem. She held the puff between her palms a moment, warming it, then set it on the boards between them. Will bent close. He could not lift it. He blew. Nothing moved. He blew again and one filament rose and drifted and caught in Kate's hair. She did not brush it away. "Again," she said. He blew until the head was bare. Every seed she caught, she pressed into a jar from the step. She screwed the lid on tight. "For February," she said. "When I want to climb the hill. I'll open it instead." It was not an hour more. It was not a day. It was a jar of seeds she would keep on a shelf, and a promise she would not go back up the hill looking for him. He had come down to say goodbye and he had done it. The green would not come again. Neither would he. Kate carried the jar inside before the light changed. Will stayed on the step with the cat and the collie and watched the door close behind her. He had until dark. He knew where he wanted to spend it.