Will bush's Arc

Chapter 23 of 26

The daisies held, but Kate did not reach. Will kept his hand on the stems and counted closes. Thirteen. Fourteen. The pulse was steady now, but it was only a pulse. Kate needed to know the flowers were his. She needed a shape to reach toward. Without one, she would live her life and never lift her hand, and the tether would run out its five years empty. He called sideways for the witch. Elspeth came through the wall in her gray robe. She sat in the dirt across from the patch and waited. "I need to give her a sign," Will said. "Something at her house. Something she cannot mistake." "You crossed the threshold," Elspeth said. "You cannot touch her boards. You cannot move a cup. The crimson was spent on the flowers. There is nothing left to make you solid." "There has to be something." He looked at the daisies. "The flowers turn when she reaches. Can they turn the other way first? Can I push a sign through them to her?" Elspeth was quiet a long moment. Then she reached into her robe and drew out a small yellow bottle. A thread of light coiled inside it. "I kept this for my own promise," she said. "It binds a voice to a living thing. One use. Not a body. Not a hand. A message through a growing thing." She set it in the dirt between them. "I give it to you. My promise waits." Will took the bottle. He thought of Kate's yard, the plot by her step where her mother had grown white trumpets that opened at dusk. He uncorked the bottle and poured the yellow into the daisy roots. He pressed his palm to the stems and pushed one word down the thread. Moonflowers. He pushed the picture with it: the plot by her step, white flowers opening at night, turning toward the house. He pushed until the bottle was empty and his hand went cold. A barefoot girl came to the doorway. She said white flowers had opened in the yard at the chalet, in a plot where nothing had been planted. She said Kate had come out with a lamp and knelt in the dirt. She said Kate had put her hand flat on the ground and left it there a long time, and the flowers had leaned toward her palm. She said Kate had gone inside and come back with the charred board and set it beside the plot. Will let go of the stems. The daisies kept their count without him for one close, then another. On the far end of the thread, something new pulled. Not a full reach. A hand laid down. A question asked. He had spent a stranger's saved promise to be answered, and Kate had answered by kneeling. The night of her full reach was still ahead. But she knew now where to put her hand.