Whichwood(64)

Well.

I fear that, with no one else to question her, Laylee might’ve gone too far.

But it was then that her friends came rushing through the crowd.

Alice and Oliver and Benyamin were breathless and exhausted by the effort of finding her, but they were so thrilled to have been reunited with the mordeshoor that they toppled into one another, pulling Laylee into their arms as they fell. Laylee leaned back to look her friends in the eyes, blinking several times. Her movements were stunned and slow, as if she’d been startled out of a trance.

Madarjoon, Benyamin quickly explained, was safely out of the way of the stampede, but the three of them had been searching for Laylee for hours. They’d only, finally, managed to find her because of Haftpa, who’d been trying to convince the circling ghosts to give up her exact location.

“Well, thank goodness for Haftpa,” Laylee said. “I’m so glad you’re alright.”

“So what are we going to do to stop this?” said Oliver quickly. “I was thinking we—”

“Stop this?” Laylee said, confused. “What do you mean? Stop what?”

All three children looked stunned—and then, scared. For a moment, no one said anything.

“You have to call off the corpses,” Benyamin finally said. His eyes were pulled together in concern. “You can’t let them keep hurting these people.”

“Hurting them?” Laylee said softly, turning to look out on the crowd. She almost laughed. “What they’re experiencing now? This hurt? This is nothing compared to what they’ve put me through.”

“But, Laylee—”

“No,” Laylee said angrily. “You don’t understand. You don’t know. You can’t know.” She swallowed, hard, her voice catching as she spoke. “This pain,” she said, pressing one hand against her chest. “You don’t know, you don’t know.” She was nearly crying as she said, “I’ve lived with their cruelty for so long—”

It was Alice who suddenly stepped forward and said, “You’re right. You’re absolutely right.”

Laylee stopped to stare at her, surprised.

“But they’re not worth your time,” said Alice. “They’re not worth what this will do to you. And I can see that this”—she gestured to the madness—“this is hurting you. You might get your revenge today, but you’ll still wake up unhappy tomorrow. There’s no relief in this,” she said, shaking her head. “Only more suffering. Your suffering.”

And Laylee hesitated, turning away as a remembered pain creased her forehead.

“They don’t deserve you,” Alice said softly, stepping forward to take Laylee’s hands in her own. “And you don’t need these worthless people to tell you what you’re worth.”

Laylee looked up, tears falling silently down her cheeks.

“You have us,” said Alice. “And we already know you’re priceless.”





Everything else was fairly easy after that.

Laylee knew she had to call off the corpses. She knew she would ask them to stand down. There was only one problem:

“How will I get their attention all at once?” she said. “There are so many of them—”

Benyamin cleared his throat. “Well,” he said, smiling. “Haftpa and his friends can build you a web.”

Everyone stared at him.

“In the sky, obviously,” Benyamin clarified. “They could weave it between two tall trees, and it’ll be big enough, sticky enough, and strong enough to hold you. From up there, you’ll be plenty visible.”

“Alright,” said Laylee slowly. “But how do I get up there?”

“Easy,” said Oliver. “We’ll get one of the corpses to toss you up.”




It took a while to build the complicated contraption, but eventually Laylee would find herself in the very unique position of being caught in an inhumanly large spiderweb, staring out over nearly two hundred thousand people, both dead and alive. It was only after the bizarreness of the moment wore off that she realized it was not enough for her to simply be strung from the sky. No one was noticing her in this darkness—they were all too preoccupied with the cruel Olympics she and her corpses had cultivated.

So she did the only thing she knew how to do:

She unhooked her whip from where it hung on her tool belt and snapped it three times through the air—the sounds like thunderclaps quaking the heavens—and that, it turned out, was enough to gather their attentions. People craned their necks to catch a glimpse of the mordeshoor suspended in a spiderweb, her long leather whip held high in one hand. Once she knew they were looking—listening, even—Laylee felt suddenly at ease. In all the recent mess and mania, she’d forgotten who she was—but of course: She was a mordeshoor.

And she was in charge here.

“Dearest dead friends,” she said, her voice ringing out into the night. “You disrupted an important sleep to stand beside me today, and you must know how grateful I am, from the bottom of my heart, for your loyalty and your kindness. But we must end the madness here tonight. There’s no need to torture these people any longer. Please,” she said, “let them go.”

“But, Mordeshoor,” said Roksana, “you said you wanted them to apologize, and they haven’t apologized yet. They haven’t promised to change their ways as you requested—”