Will bush's Arc

Chapter 29 of 41

The next cold shape came before the last had faded from the reeds. A woman this time, gray hair loose, feet bare and blistered raw. She stepped into the daisy patch and stopped. Her mouth worked but no sound came. Will kept his hands on the stems and reached for the jar of chamomile Elara had left him. He knew this face. He had seen it on a notice pinned to a board months ago, and again in Lily's memory of a kitchen. Rose Whitmore. Lily's mother. Still walking, even here, even dead-looking with grief. "I can hear you," Will said. "Put your name in the ground and I will help you." She shook her head. She pointed at his chest, the way the silent man had. She wanted a memory. Will touched the petals. "A daughter," he said. The chamomile turned toward her. It leaned hard. He almost stopped there. Then he thought of Elara's warning: spirits take what matches their own hollow. Rose's hollow was daughter-shaped. But which daughter memory would fit? He did not have one of Lily to give. He had only Kate. His hand went to the safe list under the stone. Marrow had left it there in careful print. None of the twelve touched a daughter. All the daughter memories were Kate. "Fetch Marrow," he told the barefoot girl. "Now." Marrow came fast, hood up, satchel bumping her hip. She looked at Rose, then at the leaning flowers, then at Will's face. "The list has no daughter," Will said. "She wants one." Marrow knelt and pressed her palm flat to the soil the way she read ground for buried things. She closed her eyes. "The patch is loud with Kate," she said. "Every daughter you have is Kate. Any one you give will cut the thread." "Then I give none." "Then she stays. And the cold breaks the daisies before nightfall." Will looked at Rose. Rose looked back with the same tired patience of a woman who had walked past every door in every town. She was not cruel. She was only empty. He chose the smallest Kate he had. Not the soup, not the swallow, not the dandelion. A morning at the kitchen table when Kate stirred two sugars into her coffee and slid the cup toward him without looking up. One small motion. One small sound of the spoon. He held it out. Rose's mouth opened. She swallowed it like water and stepped back into the reeds. The daisies opened. The thread to the porch-lit cottage at the base of the hill pulled taut again, then slack, then taut. Will felt for the coffee memory and found the shape of it gone. He remembered that Kate took two sugars. He did not remember watching her do it. Marrow stood. She crossed out one line on the bark. "Eleven," she said. "Ten of Kate." Will put his hands back on the stems.