Dust & Decay (Rot & Ruin, #2)(90)

“When the world changed and everything went bad,” she said.

“A lot of folks see it that way,” said the Greenman, “but it was death that changed. People are still people. Some good, some bad. Death changed, and we don’t know what death really means anymore. Maybe that was the point. Maybe this is an object lesson about the arrogance of our assumptions. Hard to say. But the world? She didn’t change. She healed. We stopped hurting her and she began to heal. You can see it all around. The whole world is a forest now. The air is fresher. More trees, more oxygen. Even in Yosemite the air was never this fresh.”

“The dead—,” she began.

“Are part of nature,” he said.

“How do you know?”

“Because they exist.”

She thought about that. “You don’t think they’re evil?”

“Do you?”

She shook her head. “People are evil.”


“Some are,” he admitted. He set the walnut shells aside and began shaving the walnut meat with the cheese grater. “People are all sorts of things. Some people are evil and good at the same time. At least according to their own view of the world.”

“How can people be good and bad?”

His dark eyes sought hers. “In the same way that people can be very brave and very, very afraid. They can be heroes and cowards from one breath to the next. And heroes again.”

Her eyes slid away. “I did something bad,” she said in a tiny voice. “I ran away.”

“I know.” It was acceptance of information but in no way a judgment.

“I—I haven’t been afraid of …” Lilah swallowed. “I haven’t been afraid of the dead for years. Not since I was little. They just … are. Do you understand?”

“Sure.”

“Last night, though … there were so many.”

“Was that it? Was it just that there were a lot of them? From what Tom told me, you used to play in the Hungry Forest. What was different about last night?”

The cat came out of the woods, jumped up on the table, and settled down with its legs tucked under its fur. Lilah began plucking more petals. “I left Benny and Nix behind at the way station. I just … ran.”

“Were you running from the dead? Because there were so many?”

“I—I don’t know.”

“Yeah,” he said gently. “You do.”

Lilah looked at the purple flower petal caught between the iron jaws of the tweezers. “This stuff gives courage?”

“Not really.” The Greenman smiled. “It helps you find where you left the courage you had. Courage is tricky, oily. Easy to drop, easy to misplace.”

“I thought that if you had courage you always had it.”

The Greenman laughed out loud. The cat, who had been dozing, opened one eye and glared at him for a moment, then went back to sleep. “Lilah, nothing is always there. Not courage, not joy, not hate or hope or anything else. We find courage, lose it, sometimes misplace it for years, and sometimes live in its grace for a while.”

She digested this as she worked. “What about love? Is that elusive too?”

“I have two answers for that,” he said, “though there are probably more. One answer is the big answer. Love is always there. It lives in us. In all of us. Even Charlie Pinkeye, bad as he was, loved something. He loved his friend Marion Hammer. He had a family. He had a wife, once. Before First Night. Everyone loves. But that’s not what you meant and I know it. The other answer, the smaller answer, is that when we love something we don’t always love it. It comes and goes. Like breath in the lungs.”

“I don’t understand love.”

“Sure you do,” said the Greenman. “Tom told me about Annie, and about George. I met George once, a long time ago, when he was out looking for you. He was a good man. A genuine person, do you understand what I mean?”

“Yes.” Tears glistened in the corners of her eyes.

“He loved you, and I believe—I know—that you loved him. Just as you loved Annie. No, you understand love just fine, Lilah.”

She said nothing.

“Or do you mean another kind of love?” he asked, arching one eyebrow. “Boy-girl love? Is there someone you love? Is there someone who loves you?”

She shook her head, then shrugged. “There is a boy named Lou Chong.”

“Benny Imura’s friend? Tom told me about him, too. A smart boy.”

“He can be stupid, too!” Her words were quick, and she stopped and shook her head again. “In town … Chong is smart. He knows science and books and stars and history. I can talk to him. We talked on his porch, at nights. Every night since I lived there. Seven months. We talked about everything.”

“He sounds nice.”

“He is … but out here … he isn’t smart.” She threw down the tweezers. The cat gave a disgusted grunt, stood up, turned around, and lay back down.

“Tell me,” said the Greenman as he reached over, picked up the tweezers, and handed them to her. After a long pause, she took them.

Lilah told him everything that had happened since Tom led them out of town. By the time she was done, all the flower petals had been plucked and were floating in water.