Chapter Seventeen: The Tethering
The ritual came in fragments.
First, a whisper from an elderly man named Jonah Pike, who hadn't spoken a full sentence in over twenty years. At the forum, he stood up suddenly, eyes wide, and chanted a single line:
> "Name the soul. Burn the echo. Anchor the living thread."
Then collapsed.
Then came the child's drawing—a stick figure woman surrounded by dark spirals, one hand tied to a red string that led off the page. When asked what it meant, the child simply said:
> "She remembered too much. The string saved her."
And finally, a page appeared on Ellie's desk in the chapel—handwritten in a familiar, looping script. Her father's.
> You're close now, El.
Not all memories are meant to be carried alone.
Some are meant to pass through you—like wind through trees.
The ones you hold, you must root.
Tie them to something real. Someone living.
Memory is not a lake. It is a river. Let it move.
She read the letter a dozen times before she realized the paper smelled faintly of tobacco and rain—her father's scent.
---
The ritual, she realized, was not about exorcising memory.
It was about anchoring it—turning memory from a tempest into a tether. A line cast between past and present. Self and shadow.
She called it The Tethering.
It began with three steps:
1. Naming – The person must name the memory aloud. Every detail. Truth or belief—it didn't matter. It had to be spoken, witnessed, made real.
2. Offering – A physical item connected to the memory must be burned, buried, or otherwise released. An echo returned to silence.
3. Binding – The person ties a red thread around their wrist, ankle, or heart. A vow. A lifeline. One end remains with them. The other is given to someone they trust—a living witness.
It was simple.
Terrifying.
And, for many, the only thing that worked.
---
Ellie tested it on herself first.
She took one of her own memory-journals, tore out a page where she described a dream of drowning in someone else's death—a miner, she thought, crushed in a collapse from a century ago. She burned the page in the chapel's brazier.
She spoke the man's name.
> "Jonas Wicks. You died alone. I see you now. But I am not you."
And she tied a red thread to her wrist.
The other end, she gave to Granger.
He said nothing, only nodded and tied it to his own.
That night, she slept deeply for the first time in weeks.
---
Word spread fast.
People lined up outside the chapel, red thread in hand, waiting for a chance to speak their ghosts aloud. Some sobbed. Others shook. A few ran away before their turn.
But those who completed the ritual emerged different.
Not healed.
Not whole.
But anchored.
Children stopped drawing spirals. Mirrors stopped whispering. Fewer people forgot their names mid-sentence.
The town held its breath.
Hope was a fragile thing—but it had returned.
---
Then the Hollow Root flared.
It happened three days after the first wave of Tetherings. A thunderous sound cracked through the grove like wood splintering. The depression glowed—blinding, this time—pulsing like a wound.
Granger, Ellie, and a few brave others approached with lanterns and iron nails in their pockets.
At the center of the glass depression, something had risen.
Not a creature.
A monument—tall, obsidian, and shaped like a tower of knotted roots frozen in time. At the top was a single red thread, fluttering like a flag.
It hummed.
Everyone could hear it.
Granger reached out. His hand recoiled before touching it.
> "It knows," he whispered. "It knows we're trying to sever the flood."
The monument wasn't angry.
It was watching.
Waiting.
---
That night, Ellie dreamed of the mirror again.
Her reflection stood inside the chapel, identical in every way except one—its eyes were hollowed out like black wells.
"You're binding memories," it said in a voice that rippled like stone hitting water. "But you've yet to bind yourself."
"I have," Ellie said. "I'm anchored."
"Not fully," the reflection said. "You're holding onto a part of the past too painful to speak. Until you name it, the door stays open."
The reflection raised a hand and pointed behind Ellie.
She turned.
There was the yellow-coated girl again.
Drenched.
Smiling.
Holding Ellie's old music box in her tiny, ruined hands.
When Ellie reached for it, the girl's mouth opened—no sound.
Just spirals.
---
Ellie woke to frost on her pillow.
Not outside. On the pillow itself.
And on the wall above her bed, someone—or something—had etched a message in ice.
> Name her.
---
The next morning, Ellie returned to the chapel. She stood before the town.
"This ritual works. But it's only the beginning."
She held up the red thread from her wrist.
"I've anchored myself to someone I trust. I've spoken the memories I can bear. But there's one I haven't. The girl. The one in the coat."
The townspeople held their breath.
"She was my sister."
Gasps. Whispers. Even Granger looked stunned.
"I was eight. She was six. I left the gate open. She followed me into the woods. I ran ahead. I wanted to scare her—just once, like she always scared me. When I turned back… she was gone."
Ellie's voice broke. She didn't stop.
"No one ever found her. No one remembered her. My parents never spoke her name again. But I remembered. And I buried it because I thought it was my fault. Because I couldn't carry it."
She pulled out the yellow music box.
"I'm ready now."
She placed it in the brazier.
She lit the flame.
She tied a fresh red thread.
And this time, the flame turned blue.
---
The monument pulsed once, then quieted.
And deep below the grove, a hum of approval echoed through the soil.
---
Ellie turned to the town.
"Memory is not the enemy. But silence is. We tether not to be saved—but to remain ourselves."
They stood, many with tears, and for the first time in a long time, Maple Hill felt unified again—not by pain, but by shared truth.
For now, the shadows stayed still.
But in the dreamspace beyond the Hollow Root, something stirred.
Something jealous of memory.
Something unbound.