The air under the Listening Tree still felt charged, as if the great oak had whispered more than either Eli or Kate could yet comprehend.
“A person,” Kate said quietly, as though speaking the thought aloud might cause the leaves to shiver again. “The Fifth Mark isn’t a thing. It’s someone.”
Eli stared at the twisted roots at his feet. “If it’s someone, they might still be alive. Or…” He paused, scanning the horizon beyond the tree. “They might have left behind people who won’t take kindly to us asking questions.”
“That’s what makes it worth finding out,” Kate replied, though her voice carried a note of unease. “We just have to figure out who—or what kind of person—would be important enough to be the Fifth Mark.”
They left the clearing with a plan forming between them: courthouse archives, old church ledgers, maybe even dusty family Bibles stored in attics. Somewhere, a record would point them toward a name.
Miles away, in a dim upstairs office, another conversation was taking place.
“They were at the tree today,” a man’s voice said, low but steady.
The man in the chair did not turn from the window. His reflection in the glass showed a face lined with age but sharpened by purpose. On the ring finger of his left hand gleamed a gold band, set with a small piece of green stone carved in the shape of a serpent’s eye.
“Both of them?”
“Yes. The old man and the woman.”
The man at the window finally turned. His eyes were pale, almost colorless, and when they settled on the messenger, the younger man swallowed hard.
“They’re closer than I expected,” the older man said. “Closer than they should be. You know what to do.”
The messenger nodded once and slipped out the door.
Back on the winding trail that led from the Listening Tree, Eli and Kate walked in easy silence, the kind born of minds running on parallel tracks. Neither noticed the figure who stepped from behind a stand of pines once they passed, watching until they were nearly out of sight.
A small click broke the quiet — the shutter of a camera.
The figure lowered the lens, studied the image, and smiled. As the camera strap slipped from their gloved hand, a flash of green caught the light — a serpent’s eye, staring from the ring they wore.
No comments:
Post a Comment