Will bush's Arc

Chapter 18 of 26

Will rested in the dark that was not dark. The thread to Kate was thin now, quieted, and he could not tell if it still held or if he only wished it did. He tried to feel her weight on the boards again. Nothing came. He tried the collie, the cat, the ghost boy. Nothing came. He understood the truth in one clean line: without a way to find her, the thread would fray, and he would drift further every hour until she was gone from him for good. He pushed against the dark. Not toward Kate this time. Toward anyone who could still hear him. He thought of the old woman with the herbs, the one who had given him the blue serum at the end. She had seen him when others could not. He pushed her name shape into the void and waited. An answer came, faint, like a hand at the other end of a long rope. Elara. He felt her the way he had felt Kate at the step, only closer, because she was reaching back. He felt the walls of her tent around her, the hanging cloth, the smell of dry root. He felt her stop what she was doing and lift her head. "You crossed too far," she said. Her voice came through the thread, not the ear. "I felt you go. I have been waiting to see if any of you came back." He told her, without words, what he needed. A way to sense Kate. A tether. Anything. He felt Elara turn to her shelves. He felt her hands move over jars. She stopped at one and lifted it down. A vial with a stopper shaped like cut glass, the liquid inside pale and slow. "Wraithvial," she said. "I have one. It is not for the living. It ties a scattered thing to a chosen person for as long as the vial holds. Five years, if you are careful. Less, if you pull hard." She paused. "I will not drink it for you. You have to choose the person, and you have to hold her while I pour." He chose Kate. He held the shape of her in the void, her hand on the glass, the soup she had made the morning he did not come home, the char of his thumbprint on the board. He held her until his edges ached. He felt Elara tip the vial into a clay cup and speak over it in the plain short way she spoke. He felt the liquid go somewhere it should not have been able to go. Then the thread thickened. It was not a road back. It was a line, taut, humming, running from the dark to wherever Kate stood. He could feel her at the other end. She was in the kitchen. She was holding the board. She was still. Will closed around the line and did not let go. Five years. He had five years to find the road it marked.