Will bush's Arc

Chapter 22 of 26

By the twelfth close, Will felt the thread thin. It had been a taut line from his hand through the daisy stems, out along the ground, to Kate's kitchen far below. Now it was a hair. When he pressed the stems, the pulse on the other end came late and weak. A petal folded, but slower than the one before it. He counted again. He was not wrong. The flowers were tiring. He did not know why. He had done nothing different. He sat still. He turned the ghosts away. He touched the stems every hour. But the channel was fraying, and if it snapped the daisies would go quiet and Kate's reach, when it came, would find nothing to answer. He called sideways for the barefoot girl. She came through the wall in her white dress. He asked her to fetch the old woman on the path, the one who marked his days on her wall. The girl nodded and slipped out. Will kept his hand on the stems and waited. The next petal took longer to close than the one before. Elara came to the broken doorway with a satchel on her hip. She could not see him, but she could feel him. He pushed his voice down the thread into the daisies until she tilted her head. He told her the flowers were dying. He told her he did not know how to feed them. He asked if she had anything left. She knelt in the dirt and set the satchel down. She took out a small red bottle with a cork sealed in wax. "Crimson," she said. "For voices between. One dose. I was saving it." She did not say for what. She pulled the cork with her teeth and poured half into the soil at the base of the patch. The other half she poured into a cup and drank. The thread pulled tight so fast it hurt. Will felt the daisies drink. He felt his own voice run down the stems into the roots and out along the line to Kate's chalet, sharp as a bell. Elara spoke into the dirt. "He is here. He is holding. The flowers will hold with him." Her words went where his could not. A petal opened that had been closing. Thirteen would come clean. When she stood, her hands shook. "That was the last of it," she said. "I will still mark the wall. But I cannot do that again." She walked out of the broken house without looking back. Will kept his hand on the stems. The pulse came steady now, stronger than before, Kate on the far end, still not reaching, but closer to the shape of a reach than she had been. He had bought the count. He had spent someone else's saved thing to do it.