Understory
Earth pours down my collar. The door above shuts with a careful click, the knot cinching with a sound I feel in my teeth. The hand in mine tightens.
“Cass,” the voice says. “Please.”
“Save air.” I wake the phone. Gray light shows root hair like wet thread and a face inches from mine: lean, rawboned, linen stained, copper wire biting his throat. Eyes too wide. A hum caught between his teeth.
I nick the wire with my shears. The hum breaks into breath. “Name.”
“Rowan.”
Not my brother. Wrong age, wrong bones. The word still lands where it hurts.
“Who put you here?”
“The Gardener.” His finger points down the tunnel. “Said I should sing if the dirt got heavy.”
“Crawl.”
We move. Elbows, toes, counting breaths that won’t stay counted. Behind us the little door creaks and settles like something larger has knelt on it.
“Left,” Rowan whispers.
We take it. My shoulder drags a root thick as a wrist, nicked and weeping. Recent. The Gardener was here today.
The ceiling lowers. A timber props a sag. On it, in pencil: SISTER—HOLD. Block letters. Careful. A hand I know. I bite iron out of my mouth and slide under.
The tunnel opens into a pocket widened by spade and stubbornness. Apple crates line one wall. Rope handles slick. Lids scratched with initials, dates, the word TITHE burned in. Some stand pried. Inside: rings, lockets, coin. Braided hair tied with red thread.
Rowan points to a door set flush with earth. New boards. Brass latch looped with baling twine, square knot.
“Same knot,” I say.
“He ties everything that way,” Rowan says. “Keeps names from leaking.”
I cut the twine. Warm air lifts the door. The chamber beyond is longer than it should be, beams bitten by damp, stones sweating. Planks laid like tables line the sides. Most are empty. One holds a fresh lid. Light snags on a scratch.
CASS.
The name hits like a handle. My thumb finds splintered cuts and remembers a small boy on a porch showing me squares and rabbits, how a knot holds if you set it clean and lies if you don’t. He said a good knot is a promise. He said never tie one you aren’t willing to cut.
Rowan clutches my sleeve. “Back.”
“No back.” I listen: water somewhere, the orchard’s slow domestic noises, no men. I touch the lid. Splinters fur its underside. Knuckle lines mark where someone punched. A smear of blood starts an A.
“Red lantern?” I ask.
“Two. And a man without one. He tells them what rows are ready.”
“Describe him.”
“Hat. Smile that doesn’t move.”
Three exits: the throat we used, a culvert low and black, and a slit to a grate choked with roots. The grate suits a hand, not a head.
“Culvert,” I say.
“It goes to the creek,” Rowan says. “Sometimes water.”
“Tonight?”
He listens like pipes talk. “Dry.”
I send the phone first. Corrugation, mud, a coil of twine, a pale shape wedged ahead. A shoe. A foot inside.
“Stay,” I tell Rowan.
I shimmy in. Shoulder blades scream. The foot is attached to a body jammed sideways. A boy, older than Rowan. Head tilted wrong. Mouth wired shut. No breath. I cut the wire and know too late. Backing out, I leave his eyes closed.
“Is he—”
“Yes,” I say. “Move.”
No bars on the phone. I thumb a voice memo anyway, keep it simple: names, directions, the square knot, the lid with mine. If I vanish here, I want a record inside a machine that can’t pray.
A clunk above. Key on lock. Red light seeps through the grate, turning root to vein.
“Count again,” a voice says.
“Three down there,” another answers. “Two breathing.”
“We seal the sister box,” the first replies. “Then we sing.”
I motion Rowan to the grate. Roots are brittle. I hook my badge clip, pull. A strand snaps. Another. The grate lifts a fraction.
“You hear that?” a voice asks.
Wayne.
“Mice,” the other says.
“Mice don’t cut wire,” Wayne answers. Footsteps adjust. The lantern turns our crack into blood. “Alden, get the coil. We end this before dawn.”
Rowan’s fingers shake on my sleeve. I keep still. Wayne’s boots stop over my head. Shadow grids his face. I can’t see his eyes, only the shape of a man who likes maps.
“Cass,” he says, calm. “If you can hear me, stay where you are.”
Rowan swallows his sound.
“You dug yourself under the harvest,” Wayne goes on. “Let me fix it.”
He taps the grate once, twice, three times. Not a tune. A count. Bells at the hour. Knocks on a door I was too young to open.
“Bring the coil,” he calls. “We’ll finish the row.”
Footsteps leave. The light thins. I breathe.
“He knows you,” Rowan whispers.
“He knows my weather,” I say. He knows where storms bank and how long people hold before they crack. He knows what words will make a girl stand still in a dark place.
The throat is closing. The culvert holds a boy who won’t move. I strip the braids from the crates, knot the red threads together. I set every square like my brother taught me—flat, firm, honest, no slack. The line burns my fingers. I throw it up the grate. It catches on a root that still remembers being branch.
“Climb.”
“You first.”
“I’m heavier.”
He climbs. Thread rasps. Dirt powders our faces. He wedges his fingers into the grate, pushes. It lifts an inch. A second. Air cuts down like a knife.
“Go,” I say.
“Ready,” Alden says above.
“Hold,” Wayne replies. His boots return. The lantern floods red. Rowan freezes. The grate is up enough for a shoulder.
Wayne leans in. A ring flashes. “What did I tell you about wandering at night?” he asks the dark, the old patience back in his voice, the porch-swing smile you can hear.
“Open it,” I say.
“Let me finish the row,” he says gently. “Then you won’t be scared.”
I yank the line. The grate pops higher. Rowan squeezes through. Hands—Alden’s—haul him out. For half a second his face washes in red, mouth trying my name.
The grate slams. The line rips free, burning a furrow in my palm. Boots move. The door in the throat shuts. The square knot cinches neat as a signature.
Above, the coil unrolls like a metal snake. Something begins to hum in the chamber—low, climbing until it finds the part of my head that breaks. The lid with my name waits on the block.
“Hold,” Wayne says, counting harvest yield. “On my mark.”
I wedge the lid against the wall and brace. Dust turns to stars in the grate’s thin light. Somewhere, a bell lifts its hammer.
I think of my father at the table, the jar of screws, the wind bell’s square knot. If I die here, let them dig every row. Let them count aloud and never stop until someone answers.
The first strike falls. The chamber breathes in.
The second gathers.
On the third, the light above dies, and something in the dark reaches for me with both hands.