Wren Kovar's Arc

Chapter 6 of 6

The bolt slid shut above them. Wren stood at the bottom of the stone steps and listened to the elder's footsteps cross the floor overhead. Then the footsteps stopped. The cellar was colder than the forest had been. Torches burned in iron sconces along the walls, low and steady, throwing yellow light on stone blocks carved with symbols Wren did not know. The creature let go of her hand and folded down against the far wall, away from the flames. Wren climbed back up the steps and pushed the door with both palms. It did not move. She hit it once. She hit it again. The wood was thick and the bolt was iron. Above her, the meeting hall was quiet. No one would come. No one was meant to come. She went back down. The creature watched her with wet black eyes. Its too-many-jointed fingers rested on the floor like spider legs. Wren looked around the cellar. Shelves of jarred roots. A folded pile of dark cloth on a low bench. Nothing that would break a door. She crossed to the bench. On top of the folded cloth lay a silver stake, its head and blade set with blue stones. The cloth beneath it was a long green cloak trimmed in silver thread. Both had been placed for her. She understood then what Elsa had meant by housing him. Wren picked up the stake. It was heavier than it looked. She turned toward the creature. He did not move. He did not beg. He only watched. "She left it for me," Wren said. "Yes," the creature said. Wren's stitched button eyes did not blink. She thought of the floorboards in the pine house and the thing still knocking somewhere beneath them, the one the ghost had wanted her to reach. This one was not that one. This one was the door the elder had opened to keep the deeper door shut. She set the stake down on the bench. She lifted the green cloak instead and carried it to the creature. She draped it over his long shoulders and pulled the hood up over his wet hair. The silver lace caught the torchlight. He looked, for a moment, like something that could pass through a village at dusk. "Stand up," Wren said. He stood. He was taller than the ceiling wanted him to be. Wren went to the wall where the torches burned and took one down from its sconce. She carried it to the base of the steps and held the flame against the underside of the wooden door, in the corner where the bolt bit into the frame. Smoke gathered along the boards. The wood began to darken. She held it steady. Above them, footsteps returned to the door. The bolt did not slide. The footsteps waited. Wren kept the torch pressed to the wood.