Wren Kovar's Arc

Chapter 3 of 6

The gravedigger stayed behind the cart. Wren climbed the porch alone. The door was already unlocked. She pushed it open and stepped inside. The house swallowed her. Her button eyes were sewn tight and painted flat. In daylight they let her see well enough. In here the black was thicker than cloth. Shapes pressed at her from every side and none of them held still. She put one hand out and touched nothing. She put the other out and touched a wall that felt wet. She took a step. Her foot came down on something round that rolled. She fell hard on one knee. A shelf tipped somewhere in the dark and glass broke against the floor in a long, slow spill. She held her breath. If she kept walking blind she would break a leg before she reached the boards Elsa had told her to knock on. The raven landed on the sill behind her. Its white throat caught what little light came through the door. It hopped once, twice, and pecked at something on the floor near her feet. A shape there. A handle. Wren felt for it. Metal, cold, with wings folded against the sides. A lantern. She lifted it and the glass inside warmed under her palm without a match. Soft gold light opened a small circle around her. She could see her own dress. She could see the broken jar at her knee. She could see, at the far end of the hall, a stripe of floorboards darker than the rest. The light did more than show the room. Something in the air behind her thinned. A pale blue shape unpeeled from the wallpaper, tall as a grown person, with two glowing eyes and a body like slow smoke. It did not lunge. It drifted between her and the dark hall, close enough that she felt no heat from it, only a draft. "Little sewn girl," it said. The voice was almost the wind through the eaves. "You brought a light in. That was clever. Put it down before you reach the boards. It will not like the light." Wren did not answer. She stood up. Her knee hurt. She held the lantern out in front of her the way the gravedigger had held hers at the moose. The blue shape drifted aside. It did not fight the light. It only watched. She walked the hall. The lantern showed her every nail and every stain. She reached the dark stripe of boards at the end. She knelt. She set the lantern down beside her, close enough to see, far enough that her hand was free. She made a fist. She knocked three times on the floor. Under the boards, something knocked back.