Will bush's Arc

Chapter 21 of 26

Will had counted seven opens and seven closes when the drifting shape found him. He was inside the broken house, one hand on the daisy stems, when a small pale form slid through the wall. It was not the girl who had led him here. This one was smaller, rounder, a soft blur with two dark eyes and a downturned mouth. It stopped a few feet from the flowers and stared at him as if it had not seen another soul in a long time. It spoke without words, the way ghosts did in this place. It was lost. It could not find the hill it had died on. It asked Will to leave the daisies and walk with it until it remembered the way. It said please. It said it had been alone for a long count of nothing. Will felt the tug at once. Not from the thread. From himself. In the void he had heard no voice but Elara's thin answer and the small girl's silent pointing. Company weighed more than he expected. He almost stood up. Then he looked at the daisies. One petal was half closed. If he walked away from the patch, his thread would slip. He would lose the count. He might miss Kate's reach when it came, and there would be no second night. Elspeth had been clear about that. He asked the drifting ghost how far the hill was. The ghost did not know. It only knew it was tired. Will made his choice. He told the ghost he could not leave the flowers. He offered what he had instead. He reached sideways along his own thin channel and called for the small barefoot girl who had brought him here. She came at once, white dress still, eyes steady. He asked her if she knew a resting place for lost ones on the hill, a small kept graveyard with lanterns. She nodded. She had passed it. She would take this one there. The drifting ghost hung in the air between them. It did not want the girl. It wanted Will. He felt its refusal like a cold hand on his sleeve. He held the daisy stems tighter and did not move. He told it he was sorry. He told it the girl was kind. After a long moment the drifting shape turned and followed her through the wall, slow, looking back once. Then it was gone, and the room was quiet again, and Will was alone with the flowers and the count. The half-closed petal finished closing. Eight. He pressed his hand against the stems until the pulse came back through the thread, steady, Kate on the other end, still not reaching. He had kept his post. He had also learned what the waiting would cost him. Five years was a long time to sit alone by a patch of daisies and turn away every voice that asked him to move.