AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Right now, I’m just trying to stay alive,” I reminded her. I sighed. “I should be getting back.”
She leaned in and kissed my cheek. “Come back to me, Rabbit. Safe and sound.”
“What if I don’t?” I asked, fear stealing over me like a shroud.
“Then I’ll come find you. I’ll always find you.”
Her lips were soft and cool against mine, and in the midst of Harrow’s folly, I let myself be lost in her for a few stolen moments.
29
THE BONES CALLEDto me. They were quieter in their whispers than the ones I carried on my hip, but if I focused, I could hear them. Together, we began to unearth the legacy of Harrow. Bone by bone, shard by shard, we gave shape to the horror this place had wrought.
We gathered them in the witch’s cottage, these scattered tokens of lives barely lived. Six small heaps. I knew where to place each bone, from the thigh bones to the tiny rattling bundles of hand bones bound in rotting cloth. I expected for a long time to eventually come across a skull, but we never did.
None of the skeletons were complete. The shadows must have found some over the years. I fretted over them, arranging them not into bodies but into shapes with meanings that I could almost grasp. I longed to fetch my spools of wire and clattering beads and make something wondrous of them. Something other than this inventory of loss.
In what seemed like no time at all, the weeks had wandered by. The end of summer drew near, the first shivers of fall approaching. “We can’t put it off much longer,” Bryony told me oneevening as we sat together near the folly, watching the breeze wrinkle the surface of the lake.
“Couldn’t we?” I asked. I leaned my head on her shoulder. She smelled of woodsmoke and moss, forest scents, except for the soft honey and olive oil smell of the soap she used.
“We haven’t found anything in days,” she pointed out gently. “We were never going to find everything. We need to bring what we have to the dark soul.”
She was right—and it terrified me because it would be the end—of me, of us, of the fragile peace of this moment. I didn’t know how yet. I just knew it would happen.
“It’s time,” she said again.
—
It had to be after sunset. Celia lifted Eli’s key and let me out just past midnight. We met up with Bryony and Desmond at the edge of the trees. Bryony had brought the bones, wrapped and placed in a duffel bag. As we walked, Bryony sang, and though shadows trembled at the edges of our light, they never strayed close.
At the folly, Desmond lit the fire. Quickly, the fingers of flame reached up through the gathered kindling, and he stood back. “Let’s get this over with,” he said.
We set the bones on our side of the fire, still in their bags, and once again Bryony nicked the side of my hand with her knife. The blood hissed into the flames, and we waited.
I expected Mary Beaumont again, but the small figure that stepped out of the dark was Jessamine Vaughan. Celia whimpered; Desmond made a soft, sad sound.
“We need to talk to you,” I said. The rapid tempo of my pulse made me feel faint.
Jessamine stretched her hands toward the bones.“You found us.”
“As much as we could. We thought they would help you.”
“We are scattered. Bring them to us,” she said, looking at me.
“I—we did,” I said. “They’re here.”
“Bring them,” she insisted, and backed away, beckoning. I looked helplessly at Bryony.
“I think we do what she says,” Bryony suggested.
“In for a penny,” Desmond added with a nervous shrug. Celia gripped his hand tight as we gathered the bones again and followed Jessamine into the woods.
I tried to pay attention to where we were walking, but the figment took a meandering path, and the darkness obscured the landmarks that might have told me where we walked.
We came to a stand of trees around a rocky hillside. Jessamine turned to smile at us—and then disappeared into the rock. Bryony crept closer to the hillside and held up her lantern. There, concealed by the rock face, was a narrow passageway.
“It looks like it opens up further in,” Bryony said. She angled her body and stepped through, and with the lantern on the other side, I could see that the passage did widen, though not by much. We’d have to walk single file. Celia started forward, but Desmond pulled her back.
