WHO: Hecate and Hecuba WHEN: Thursday night, straight after Marcie's offering WHERE: The Hole and Sleepy Hollow WHAT: Working out some kind of magical tracking device WARNINGS: A little bit of grave desecration
Hecate lay her gloved fingertips over the cracked and swollen front door, and the lock mechanism quickly forgot its own mind. She pushed the door open, ducking underneath the police tape that crossed the entrance.
The house smelled of blood and violence, motor oil and damp. She picked her way along the hallways, following the same route Ares had taken a few days before. For a few moments, she sat in the bedroom that showed signs of Kaden, picking up the biology textbook that had half slid under his bed, avoiding the torn up books in the corner that had been angrily pissed on. She searched through the single set of drawers, and found many traces of a life lived here, but nothing with a strong connection to the boy. Nothing stronger than the hat Marcie had given her.
A promise was a tenuous connection. The hat in her hands wanted to be returned to Kaden, fueled by the strength of Marcie’s love for him. It yearned, but her scrying had not given her a direction, only a strong feeling that this must be done. To save some part of Marcie, he must be found. To save every part of himself, he must be found.
There was nothing in this house that would help her find him. The house did not want him back and Hecate didn't need to know Kaden to know he did not want to return to this house.
On her way out, Hecate paused at the spot where Cy had died. The site screamed murder. The site screamed violence and war. She paused a little longer, fingers at the edge of the bloodstain. Blood was a connection, blood of his brother…
From a large pocket in her trench-coat she pulled a knife, and sliced it into the thin carpet. It was hard work, the knife was not made for such things, but she succeeded in hacking off a hand-sized piece. From another pocket, she pulled a sterile evidence bag attained through her life as a PI, and bagged up the carpet, then changed her gloves.
The door remembered how to lock behind her, and she re-joined Hecuba, who was waiting across the road. The little shrine had taken some damage, and the faith that had been woven through the chain link fence with the willow had been lost. Hecate called Hecuba to follow, but the dog refused to move. She climbed onto an old tyre so she wasn’t sitting in the slimy mud, and sat, staring at the ground. The tyre was barely big enough to hold her, but Hecuba was skilled at climbing on things too small to take her size, like armchairs and human laps.
When Hecate did not move fast enough she rumbled a low woof, and Hecate joined her, inspecting the area of ground she was staring at. Below the layers of mud and grassroots trying their best, she could sense the bones of a dog; he'd built the shrine on a grave.
“Oh, you’re right,” Hecate breathed. Here was another connection. "Good girl."
Hecuba thumped her tail against the ground – she knew she was both right and good – and stepped down, raking her huge paw against the mud. She flung clods of dirt into the air behind her, strong muscles digging fast and frantically as Hecate stepped back, working a spell of reparation even as Hecuba desecrated the grave of Kaden’s dog.
The bones beneath the earth were wrapped in a blanket, and Hecate crouched down as Hecuba stepped back, and pulled the blanket apart. He’d been buried with a few things, a toy with a long dead squeaker, a collar and lead. Most significantly, there was a folded piece of paper beneath the collar, unreadable now from the years in the wet earth, and it looked as though it would crumble if touched. She could sense it was Kaden’s work, because she was looking, intently, for Kaden’s work, but the note had not been written by Kaden alone. Tragos, too, had had a hand in it.
Hecate did not touch the note - she did not want to disturb this place more than she had to - but from the grave she took a femur, bagging it up with the greatest of respect, and sliding it into a pocket on the opposite side of her body from the bloodstained piece of carpet. The grave took some work to put back to rights, and Hecate spoke her apologies for the disturbance, and her thanks. The boy had loved the dog and the dog had loved the boy.
An old connection, but a deep one. A connection that had shaped his life, this far. Hecate didn’t know what would happen when she introduced the bone to the hat, but she hoped they would get on, united under a common purpose.
Back at her home in Sleepy Hollow, she sat in the centre of her circular rug, in the middle of her conservatory. The air smelled strongly of the dried thyme she was burning, the fresh thyme she'd crushed, the woven circle of it she soaked in rainwater collected under the last new moon. Thyme to find the lost, thyme to connect to the dead, thyme for courage, thyme for clear sight.
She lay the bone, the hat and the carpet along three points in a circle, and with her eyes both closed and open, asked them what else they needed.
What else they needed to point her toward two boys, both born from tragedy and war.