Whichwood(43)

While Haftpa scuttled off in search of more compatriots, Laylee’s twenty-two remaining ghosts had begun to gather. It took longer than Laylee would have liked for them to show their faces, but then—well, they were a bit mortified to have been found out like this. The ghosts still felt they’d done right to avenge their mordeshoor, but somehow they knew she wouldn’t approve of their methods, and they couldn’t bear to face her. Fortunately, they didn’t have a choice in the matter. There was a definitive kind of magic that tied the ghosts to her, and they could not disobey her call so long as she was alive. And so they floated cowardly forward until they stood before her, transparent heads hung in shame.

No one but Laylee could see what was happening, but that didn’t matter. Her friends stood by apprehensively, ready to step in should she call upon them.

“Do you see now?” Laylee said to her dead. “Do you see what it would be like to stay behind?” She lifted one weak arm to point at the bumbling skins inhabited by the ghosts pretending to be human, their lopsided arms and noses sending passersby screaming into the night. “They are reviled. They leave in their wake nothing but blood and madness. You,” she said to the still-gauzy spirits, “in an unfamiliar flesh, would not be accepted back into your families. You would not be invited back to society. Your time here has come to an end, friends. You have to trust in the hourglass of the worlds,” she said. “You must move on when it’s time to go.”

“But you abandoned us!” cried one of the ghosts. “You left us behind—”

“Never,” said Laylee. “I would never. I fell ill only because I tried too hard. But I would never abandon you to this fate,” she said, nodding again to the devastating scene before them. “You are my charges in this world, and it is my duty to protect you.

“Please,” she said softly. “Let me help you move on.”





Haftpa had returned.

The city could hear them approach before they saw their small, creeping bodies, thousands upon thousands of hard-shelled creatures charging into the center of town. Benyamin’s plan was for the insects to form protective armor around the skinless humans just long enough for Laylee to convince the eighteen ghosts to give said skins back to their human owners. Haftpa scurried forward as quickly as he could, climbed atop Benyamin’s shoulder, and receiving the signal from his human-friend, he lifted one leg to unleash his comrades upon the night.

Tragically, they were already too late.

Just as the insects charged forward, four of the skinless bodies collapsed, unmoving, to the ground. The impossible moment was so saturated with madness that there was no time to stop—no time for Laylee to lose her head—no time at all to pause and mourn the four innocent lives they’d been too slow to save. What could she do? How would she answer for this? Laylee’s head was spinning. It was simply unacceptable that anyone had died; improbable that she was not dreaming.

Had she dreamed it?

The sounds of the world seemed to surge back into her consciousness. Suddenly she heard a rushing stream of clicking legs thrusting into the darkness, parting people and places, climbing over upturned wares and shattered lanterns. The mass of bugs poured all at once into the center square where the remaining bloody, skinless human figures were still staggering and, in a moment of horrible necessity, climbed atop the soggy masses of flesh until the still-alive fourteen bleeding human bodies were swallowed up by a sea of sharp black exoskeletons. The thousands of insects moved in choreographed perfection, linking arms and legs in a synchronized procession, clicking into place to create temporary armor. The entire act took no longer than several minutes, but the world seemed to slow in that time, strangers looking on with a combination of awe and revulsion as the entomological world came together to spare these human lives.

The armor would afford them at least a few more hours of protection, and in that time, Laylee and her troop would have to move quickly. Instinct alone was keeping Laylee afloat. She didn’t know if anyone else had noticed yet, or if any of her friends had seen what had happened. Alice and Benyamin rushed forward to usher the now-armored bodies away from the awkwardly skinned ghosts; Laylee still needed time to negotiate with the ghostly thieves who’d stolen the human skins, but at least until then the human bodies, now protected from the elements, were able to move with ease and quickly ceased their retching.

Laylee, who was still negotiating with her spirits, was making requests from her wheelbarrow, and Oliver, her newly appointed assistant, was only too happy to oblige. They would have to get everyone back to the castle as soon as possible, and they would need as many volunteers as they could get. They would have to wash forty-four corpses tonight (including the four newly dead bodies), or many more innocent people would die before morning.




Benyamin’s mother took it upon herself to gather the volunteers. She promised to go door-to-door, collecting as many helping hands as possible, and would meet them back at the castle. But she urged them not to wait for her.

“Go,” she said. “You take the train—it’ll be arriving any moment now—and I will meet you at the castle. We’ll take transport by water.”

So they split up.

Alice, Benyamin, Laylee, and Oliver herded up the ghosts, the armored humans, and the skinned spirits (who went with great reluctance, still unconvinced they should give up their freshly acquired flesh), and rushed for the abandoned station, where the glimmering carriages were just pulling in.