Whichwood(8)

Alice gasped. “What are y—”

But Laylee’s face had just flushed a bright red, and Alice couldn’t be bothered to finish her sentence. The heat was moving quickly through Laylee’s body, and her cheeks were now a sweet, rosy pink. The warmth would last only a short while, but it always helped her get through the rougher hours of winter workdays.

It was an awed Oliver who finally whispered, “What did you just do? I could’ve sworn you just ate a matchstick.”

Laylee was feeling very warm and, suddenly, a little sleepy. She blinked softly and smiled, only vaguely aware that she’d done so. “Yes,” she said. “I did.”

“But—”

“I know,” Laylee said quietly. “Some people don’t approve of Quicks, but I can’t say I care.”

“It’s not that at all,” said Oliver. “We’ve just never seen such a thing before. We don’t eat matches in Ferenwood.”

Laylee looked up, slightly mollified. “Oh.”

“How do they w-work?” said Alice, who was now standing in snow up to her waist.

“Well,” said Laylee, as she tilted her head, “they don’t work for everyone. But the idea is that they catch fire inside of you, heating you up from the inside out.”

“That’s f-fascinating,” said Alice, who was now eyeing Laylee’s pockets with a new hunger.

“Wait,” said Oliver, “why don’t they work for everyone?”

It was a reasonable question, but Oliver had made the mistake of touching Laylee as he spoke, and Laylee looked him over now—his hand on her arm, her gaze strange and frightening in the moonlight—and wondered whether Oliver had lost the whole of his mind. After all, her body was her own business, and she’d not told him he could touch her. The problem was, Oliver wasn’t even aware he’d done so.

The ghostly midnight glow had caught the silver in her eyes, and the helmet she wore glinted gold against her skin, and somehow, in that moment, Laylee looked more ethereal than ever: half alive, impossible to grasp, angry even when she smiled. She was a dazzling girl and Oliver Newbanks was in danger of being too thoroughly dazzled. But Laylee could never understand why others were so enchanted by the macabre, or why they found her dance with death so morbidly exciting. It angered her, to be so exoticized.

So she locked eyes with him and said, very quietly, “Not everyone has the right spark, you know.”

And pushed him in the snow.





Oliver had mixed feelings about being so unceremoniously shoved to the ground. He was fourteen years old now and fully interested in the sorts of quiet, delicate things that transpired between the hearts of young people, but he never had the chance to sort it all out. By the time he got to his feet and caught up to the others, they’d come upon a large clearing where even the trees knew better than to trespass.

From high above, the scene was spare: a white canvas backdrop painted thick with fresh frost, three winter coats triangulated before a claw-foot tub half-buried in the snow. It was somehow implausibly colder here—as there was a distinct lack of life to lend any heat to the space—and it was silent, desperately silent. Unnervingly so. No living thing—not plant, not insect, not animal—dared disturb the rituals of the final bath, and so they were alone, they three: the strangest sort of children come to hold hands with the dark.

Forgotten for the moment was the cold, the ice, the fear, the hour. Night had been sliced open and, within it, they found mortality. This, the final act of the dead, demanded respect that could not be taught. This was the least alive they’d be tonight, and a hush fell over their reverent forms as three sets of knees hit the ground before dawn. Alice and Oliver had not been told to be still; they were compelled to be. Shadows crept up their limbs, wrapped around their mouths and ears and bones and squeezed. Breaths were extinguished; lips did not move; sounds were not made; and from the silence emerged an understanding: Life would clasp hands with death on these occasions only, in the interest of servicing both worlds and the wandering spirits that belonged therein.

Break this bond, and you, too, shall break.

Alice and Oliver gasped and choked their way back to steady breaths, heaving softly as the shadows lifted, massaging throats and lips and frozen hands. Their wild eyes found each other—for fear had found them first—and they held tight to one another, soundlessly saying all that would remain unspoken.

Laylee sighed, disappointed.

Alice and Oliver would never be true mordeshoors—for that, they’d need the blood—but if they were to ever be even remotely useful, they’d have to first unlearn their fears.




The tub had no spigot, no spout, no knobs or levers, but when Laylee placed her bare, frozen hands on either side of the porcelain, its depths began to fill—slowly at first, and then quickly, furiously, sloshing hard against the edges.

Where the water came from, not even Laylee knew; all that mattered was that it existed. The first fill was always the most heavily perfumed, and the heady aroma was nearly too much for Alice and Oliver, who, bent forward with the weight of its lure, had not yet realized its purpose. The scent, you see, was a siren song for the dead, and the distant sounds of their slogging, dragging limbs meant they’d already begun their pilgrimage to water.

Single file, the decaying corpses cut a swerving path through the snow, occasionally stumbling over their molting limbs, bone shoving through sinew with each inarticulate movement, and Laylee had at least the propriety to look ashamed. (It was, after all, her fault they were falling apart.) She knew she should’ve dispatched her dead long ago, but it was a hard, thankless job and, well—normally no one was around to judge the state of her subjects.