Whichwood(9)

Alice and Oliver could not mask their disgust.

Laylee took this reaction quite personally, but I really feel I should say—that is, it is my humble opinion that even a band of newly dead corpses would’ve affected them thus. (In fact, I tried telling Laylee this very thing, but she refused to listen. I’m afraid the girl is too hard on herself.)

Laylee, for her part, was watching the bodies closely, carefully ascertaining when to make their marching stop. For the sake of her guests, she gave them a wide berth, and when they’d reached a ten-foot radius of their little clearing, Laylee held up her hand. No words, just this simple movement, and all forty-six of them collided to a halt, collapsing in a tangled, rotting heap. Laylee cringed as she heard an ankle snap off one man’s leg and roll to the ground. This was not the way to show her guests a good time.

Oliver had swallowed back the same bit of bile on no fewer than four occasions now, and Alice, who’d nearly fainted in as many times, was still upstanding simply because the imagined stench arising from the distant pile of flesh had kept her conscious against her will. This, she thought, was her reward for performing so well at her Surrender. She could scarcely believe her luck.

Laylee had turned her eyes back to the tub, and Alice, who could bear to look at the mangled limbs no longer, was grateful for the reprieve. A thin layer of ice had already begun to form at the surface of the water, but Laylee broke the ice with a practiced swiftness, and it was this that prompted a newly shivering, nearly vomiting Alice to say,

“Couldn’t we possibly move the tub inside?”

But Laylee would not look at her. “You cannot wash the dead where the living still sleep,” was all she said.

Alice didn’t know how to respond, for fear of saying the wrong thing. She was beginning to think of Laylee as infinitely more frightening than any dead person she’d ever met, and even Oliver (who was hard-pressed to think rationally when faced with such a beautiful fa?ade), found himself rethinking his attraction to this young mordeshoor. Perhaps it was the stack of putrid bodies piled off to the side, or maybe it was the single finger he’d just discovered in his sleeve, but there was something distinctly unromantic about this experience, and Oliver couldn’t yet suss out the why. In fact, he and Alice had just decided that this was quite possibly the worst adventure they’d ever undertaken when Laylee surprised them both by doing something strange and beautiful, and for just a moment, no one could remember to be afraid.

Slowly, very slowly, Laylee had touched her lips. She let her fingers linger at the seam for just a few seconds, and then finally, carefully, she retrieved a single red rose petal from the inside of her mouth.

This she let fall into the tub.

Instantly, the water changed. It was now a boiling, churning sea of liquid crimson, and Alice was so stunned she nearly stumbled, and Oliver, who caught her, was staring at Laylee in shock and awe.

Laylee would not look away from the water. “Choose your first body,” she said quietly. “You will have to carry it here yourself.”





Alice and Oliver set off at once.

Laylee did not watch them as they went, or she would have seen them stumbling—half fear, half exhilaration—toward the mass of matted bodies, holding fast to each other lest they lose the little courage that kept them warm. No, she was too busy watching the water, combing its ruddy depths with her eyes in search of something—a sign, maybe, that she hadn’t made a false move. The thing was, Laylee was beginning to wonder whether an offer of assistance could ever arrive so sincerely. She felt weak of mind and bone, certain now that she’d agreed far too hastily, so desperate for help that she’d lost what good sense she had left.

The longer she stood alone, the more intensely the night gnawed at her. Had she sold herself to a pair of strangers? For what? A few nights’ reprieve from the occupation to which she was fettered? Why had she so easily broken? More distressing still:

What would they take from her after she’d taken what she wanted from them?

Laylee had no way of knowing that her fears were unfounded. She knew not the hearts of her two companions, and she’d never have believed a stranger capable of possessing pure intentions. No, she lived in a world where goodness had failed her, where darkness inhaled her, where those she loved had haunted and discarded her. There was no monster, no ghoul, no corpse in a grave that could hurt her the way humans had, and Laylee was afraid that tonight she’d made a most grievous mistake.

So when her companions finally returned, death in their arms and good deeds on their minds, Laylee had once again shuttered closed the doors and windows of her heart. She was no longer merely curt, but now edging on cruel, and she did not care whose heart she hurt, so long as it wasn’t hers.




It was Alice who returned first.

She was carrying a small child in her arms—a boy of seven or eight—and she was openly weeping. Forgotten was her innocence, her fear, her childish approach to their solemn business tonight. For it is one thing to behold the dead—and entirely another to hold it. In her arms this child was human, too real, and Alice could not manage her emotions. She was bordering on mild hysteria, and Laylee had no patience for it.

“Wipe your face,” she said. “And be quick about it.”

“How can you be so unmoved?” said Alice, her voice breaking. Her arms were shaking from the weight she could not carry and, very gently, she let the child’s body fall to her feet. “How?” she said again, wiping at her tears. “How can you do this without feeling—”