The Girl in the Green Silk Gown

by Seanan McGuire

  The new dead all want news—what’s the date, what’s the year, do you know my husband, my wife, my sister, my parents? Do you know me, do you know how I died, am I really dead? Was it all just a dream?

  It wasn’t a dream. It still isn’t. The clothes the farmer carries are the most threadbare, the least warm, and that too is a part of the normal Halloween experience. I offer him a nod as I walk past, not stopping until I reach the youngest of the children. I crouch, putting myself on her level, and ask, “Can I please have something to wear?”

  The missing teeth in her smile makes her look a little like a jack-o-lantern herself as she hands me the jeans, underpants, and flannel shirt that are the proper reward for that question. Her siblings are doing the same all around me, while her father stands at the center of his swarm of new and needy risen dead.

  “You Rose?” asks her mother, in the pause between handing out pairs of socks and button-down shirts to the dead.

  I nod.

  “Our lady told us you’d be coming for the festivities this year,” she says. “We’re honored to have you with us.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’m Violet Barrowman. You need anything at all, you just need to come find me, and I’ll sort you out.”

  “Thank you, Violet. I really appreciate it.” The jeans are snug against my skin, blue denim benediction welcoming me back into the world of the living, whether I want to be here or not. “Happy Halloween.”

  The pumpkin patch yields up its harvest of the dead under the watchful eye of the rising sun. So many of them are new, only dead within the last year, unaware of what exactly is at stake. They’ll learn. Because that, too, is a part of Halloween.

  Sweet Persephone, I don’t want to be here. Damn you, Bobby Cross. Damn you forever.

  * * *

  “What’s the big deal about Halloween?” Gary asked, looking between me and Apple with clear confusion on his face. He hadn’t been dead long enough to understand. I wanted to grab his cheeks and kiss him and tell him not to worry, that there was no possible way I was going to do this.

  I didn’t. I couldn’t. If Apple said this was the only way that meant it was the only way, because she had no reason to lie to me. We were allies, as much as a routewitch and a dead girl ever could be, and more, she felt guilty enough over Bobby’s existence that I knew there was no way she’d intentionally hurt me.

  Halloween could hurt me. It wouldn’t even have to intend to. But if she was sure . . .

  “How will it help?” I asked grimly.

  “Halloween will cast you in skin again, make it so the world fixes its eyes on you. The road will remember your name, and it’ll read the power you’ve collected for what it is. That means that when the clock strikes midnight and the night officially ends, you’ll be your own sacrifice, and that sacrifice will be greater than Dana’s. It’ll be enough to burn the blood away. It’s all about power, and putting the distance you carry on your skin to work.”

  “Why can’t someone else do it?” Gary grabbed my hand and held it tight. “There’s something you’re not saying.”

  “No one else can do it because I’m not asking a routewitch to die for me,” I said. “It’s as simple as that.” As the words left my mouth, my heart sank. I had just committed myself.

  Apple looked at me with sympathy. “It never is,” she said. “You have to.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “Then I’m going too,” said Gary. “Whatever this is, I’m going too.”

  “No!” He stared at me, startled. I tried, and failed, to suppress a shiver as I repeated, “No. You can’t. Promise me.”

  “Rose—”

  “Promise me.”

  “Okay.” He frowned. “I promise.”

  “Good.” I leaned my head against his shoulder, closing my eyes. “Where?”

  “I’ll send you to the Barrowmans,” said Apple. “They’re good people. Old ambulomancer blood, which means they’re not my subjects, but they listen to me out of courtesy, and they regard the presence of the dead as a blessing upon their farm. That’s great for our purposes, because it encourages them to treat you well.”

  “Treat us well how, exactly?” I asked warily.

  “Anyone who hosts the dead on Halloween is required to clothe and feed them, but there’s nothing that says they have to dress you warmly or feed you well. The Barrowmans do both those things, as much as tradition allows. They screen the people they invite to their fields. They’ll take as good care of you as is possible, especially once I tell them you’re mine.”

  “There’s still a risk,” I said.

  Apple looked at me, a lifetime of sadness and sacrifices in her eyes.

  “Isn’t there always?” she asked.

  * * *

  Apple told me the Barrowmans went above and beyond what’s required, but I didn’t expect this sort of spread. They’ve packed picnic tables into the field behind their barn, loading them down with platters of pancakes, casserole dishes of scrambled eggs, and sizzling plates of bacon. They’re not just treating us well: they’re treating us very well. My stomach growls. The newly dead jockey for position around the food, and I wonder if they understand how much is at stake. How much is always at stake when the jack-o-lanterns burn away the dark and the dead go walking with the living.

  Violet takes a seat next to me on the bench, her youngest sticking close to her like a solid shadow. “How’s the road been treating you?” she asks, and piles more bacon on my plate.

  There’s a word in German that means “grief bacon,” eating because sadness hasn’t left any other options. I wonder idly whether there’s a word for guilt bacon, because that’s what this is: this is bacon offered because she feels bad for what she’s helping the holiday do.

  “I can’t complain,” I reply—the right answer, even if it’s not entirely the truth. I could complain all day long, but there isn’t time for that, and there isn’t enough bacon in the world to wipe her guilt away if she starts seeing me as a person. Instead, I turn a smile on the little girl, waving a strip of bacon in what I hope is an amiable manner. “Hi. I’m Rose. What’s your name?”

  Violet pales. She brings her kids around the risen dead, but she doesn’t want them talking to us. Well, tough. Too late now.

  “Holly,” whispers the kid.

  Trust Apple to send me to a farm filled with flower names. “You’re how old? Four?”

  Holly holds up five fingers, expression solemn.

  “Wow, five? Really? That’s amazing.” I feign astonishment, but it isn’t entirely false. I have no idea how to tell the ages of living kids. It’s easier with ever-lasters. They age as they move through their self-imposed grades, and they look older than I do by the time they graduate. The only age that matters is the one they choose, and they’re always happy to share it.

  They’re the only ghosts who can grow up in the twilight. The rest of us stay where we stopped, forever, no matter how many years roll by.

  “We were surprised when Her Majesty chose to send a champion,” says Violet, tousling Holly’s hair to distract her. “Are you a fighter? We have a good batch this year, but you look strong enough.”

  She’s trying to flatter me. It’s not going to work. “No.” My answer is simple, because that’s all it needs to be. Will I fight, here, on Halloween, when the dead wear flesh and the living seek to steal it? No. Not this year, not next year, not ever. “I’m running.”

  “Oh.” Violet doesn’t sound like she approves or condemns my choice: she’s just curious, and that’s the worst part of all. She probably grew up on this farm, watching the dead rise every Halloween, watching what came next. “What happens if you don’t get away?”

  “I guess if I don’t get away, I die the death you don’t come back from.” I shrug and pull a platter of pancakes closer. Around me, the chatter of the new dead is quiet
ing, dying down to a murmur as the long dead tell them what’s really going on. What price we actually have to pay for a day of wearing farm hand-me-downs and eating breakfast near the pumpkin patch.

  Trucks are driving up the gravel driveway, their tires grinding like the teeth of some unspeakable beast. Halloween is upon us. The treats have been delivered. Now comes the time for the biggest trick of them all.

  * * *

  My initial count was off by two, stragglers who took their time stumbling out of the hayrick. Seventeen living dead people stand in a ragged line behind the Barrowman family barn. Of the six long dead, I’m the youngest; of the eleven new dead, one died only a week ago, a fresh-faced teenage football star who still doesn’t understand that this is something more important than the games his funeral has forced him to miss. Violet is around the front, wrangling the hunters, keeping them from crossing the line before the time is right. The farmer—Matthew Barrowman—is attending to us dead folk, his teenage sons behind him, like we’re the ones they need protecting from.

  Silly boys. We’re not the ones with the guns.

  “Some of you know how this goes, so I’m asking for your patience while I explain it to the rest. Everyone has to have the same chances when the candle’s lit.” He casts an apologetic glance my way. Violet must have told him that of the long dead, I’m the only one who’s not choosing to stand and fight. “For the rest of you . . . this is Halloween. You’ve probably noticed that you’re all breathing.”

  Laughter from the crowd. One of the newly dead shouts, “Best trick or treat prize I’ve ever gotten!”

  “We’ll see if you still feel that way in a minute,” says Matthew. His tone is grim—grim enough to stop the laughter. “Around the front of the barn are twenty men and women with guns in their hands. They’ll be coming around the barn soon, and they’re not here to serve you breakfast and say hello. They want to kill you again, and if you die here today, on Halloween, you don’t come back. Not here, not in the twilight, not anywhere.”

  “But . . . but why?” gasps a new dead woman with pretty funeral parlor curls in her glossy black hair. She has stars tattooed down her neck, inviting people to make wishes on her skin. “What did we ever do to them?”

  “We’re alive,” says one of the long dead. Long enough dead that I can see him as he should be, as he would be in the twilight, in the way he sets his shoulders, the way he holds his hands. He’s a phantom rider. The wind should be the only thing fast enough to catch him. Here and now, he’s flesh and blood, like everybody else. “That’s enough.”

  The new dead gape at him, contestants in a game they never volunteered to play. We’re all contestants here. It’s just that some of us have seen the game before, even if we’d managed to avoid it up until now. “Those twenty people are either dead or dying,” someone says—I say. Dammit, when did I become the one who’s always taking pity? “Probably half of them came back on this field once before. The other half, they’ve got something broken in them, they’ve heard the beán sidhe’s song, and they’re trying to stick to skin a little longer. So they come here to hunt, and kill, and stay. Happy fucking Halloween.”

  From the way Matthew looks at me, I can’t tell whether he’s amused or annoyed by my interjection. “If they kill you tonight, they win a year of life,” he says, slipping back into the narration like he’d never stopped. Oh, he’s done this before. “One year, from candle to candle. If you can keep away from them and stay alive until the candle goes out, you’ll go back to the twilight and nobody will be able to touch you until next Halloween.”

  “Why didn’t anyone tell us this?” asks the star-necked woman. She sounds distraught, like nothing about this makes any sense at all. Smart lady. “I didn’t do anything wrong, and I wouldn’t have come if I’d known! I shouldn’t have to die again!”

  “It’s not about right and wrong; it’s about the balance between the living and the dead,” says Matthew, not unkindly. He’s trying to be gentle with them, trying to get them ready to run. The hunters are here for a hunt; they tell themselves that shooting a man who runs is somehow more honorable than shooting one who stands his ground. Maybe they’re right. How the hell would I know? I’ve never felt the need to shoot anyone. “You came because someone told you you’d get to spend a day alive, you’d get fed and clothed and be able to breathe real air, to walk in the world. Well, this is how you pay for that.”

  “Tell them about the other option,” says a voice, and it’s mine again. I keep speaking up when I have no business speaking.

  It’s really been one hell of a year.

  This time Matthew frowns at me, like my contribution is unwelcome, and I wonder, with a cold chill, whether he was planning to explain the whole deal. “There are weapons hidden around the farm,” he says. “No guns, but . . . other things. If you find them, you can choose to stand and fight the hunters. Kill one, and you get a year among the living.”

  “So what’s the catch?” asks our new dead football star, with a look on his face that says this is too good to be true. “I kill some homicidal asshole and I get my life back?”

  “If you kill on Halloween, you give up your place in the twilight,” says Matthew earnestly. “You’ll get a year. After that, you’ll have to come back here and kill again, or else you’ll end.”

  “We’ll die?” asks the girl with the stars on her skin.

  “No,” says Matthew, “you’ll end. Dying implies going on to something, back to the twilight or on to the other side, and that won’t happen for you. Not if you take a life on Halloween. You’ll just end.”

  She looks at him, big doe-eyes wide and solemn, and nods like she understands. I have to fight the sudden urge to slap the stars off her skin. “You don’t get your life back if you do this,” I say sharply. Maybe a little too sharply. Every head turns in my direction, and only the long dead look like they know what I’m trying to say. “Your family buried you. Or they cremated you, or they donated your body to science, but whatever. You’ve been recycled. You’re gone. If you fight, if you do this, you’re buying your way back into the world of the living, but you’re not buying your way back into your life. That’s over.”

  “What are you going to do?” sneers the football star.

  “I’m going to run,” I say. “I recommend you do the same.”

  “I know you,” says the phantom rider. “You’re Rose Marshall. Way I hear it, running away is your forte.” He smirks. Like running is something shameful; like I should play Russian roulette with, for lack of a better word, my soul.

  “Shove it up your ass,” I snap.

  The hunters around the front of the barn let up a wild cheer. One of the Barrowman teens comes quick-stepping around the corner, a candle in one hand, the fingers of his other hand curled protectively around the flame. “Mama says it’s time,” he says breathlessly, hurrying to his father’s side.

  “That’s the bell, folks,” says Matthew as he takes the candle from his son’s hand. “Good luck out there.”

  I don’t stick around to see him place the candle in the mouth of the waiting jack-o-lantern. I’m already turning and diving into the corn like a mermaid fleeing back into the sea. My borrowed shoes pinch my feet. I don’t let that slow me down. Halloween is here, and all I have to do to make my sacrifice count is make it through the night alive.

  * * *

  The corn whips around me as I run, veiling the world in green, obscuring everything. It will hide me. That’s good. It can also hide the hunters. That’s bad.

  Two sets of footsteps fall in beside mine, and I know almost before I look who it’s going to be: the football player and the star-necked girl, both of them doing their best to keep up. He’s doing it easily, she’s stumbling, but they’re giving it the old college try.

  “What are you doing?” I hiss.

  “Please,” whispers the star-necked girl, gasping, already running out of
wind. She wasn’t an athlete, that’s for sure. “You’re the only one who seems to care. Please, don’t leave me.”

  Halloween is no time to feel sympathy; it’s a time to run, and to hide, and to shove anyone who gets in your way into the line of fire, because at the end of the night, only so many of you are going to walk away. Every hunter who makes a kill is one more hunter who isn’t gunning for me. There’s no Halloween bonus for bringing in the greatest haul. So there’s no good reason for me to slow down, to step into the shadow of a tall row of corn, and ask, “What are your names?” No reason at all.

  I do it anyway.

  “S-Salem,” says the star-necked girl, hair not quite so perfect anymore, pulse jumping in her pale throat.

  “Jimmy,” says the football star. He smiles, confident and cocky, and I realize he thinks I stopped because of him, because he’s always been the kind of boy who looks like catnip to the kind of girl I used to be. He doesn’t understand how much too young for me he is. “It’s Rose, right? You’ve done this before?”

  Kid, I died before your mama was born, I think, and shake my head, and say, “I’ve done my best to stay clear of these fields. You should have done the same. I’m running, and I’m hiding. If you’ve got other ideas about tonight, this is where you get the hell out of my way.”

  “Aw, don’t be like that. You know all about this shit. That means you must know where they hide the weapons, right?” Jimmy’s smile gets wider, little boy playing at being a predator. “We could win this thing.”

  “There’s no winner on Halloween,” I snap. “You want to ‘win this thing,’ you can go do it without me. If you want to keep yourself safe, come with me. If not, stay here and find your own damn weapons.” I turn and start walking again, building up to a slow jog. We’re in the corn. That’s a start. I hear footsteps behind me, both Salem and Jimmy following, and speed up a little. They’ll keep up or they won’t. Either way, I don’t intend to die until that candle blows out and I fall back onto the ghostroads, finally restored to what I’m supposed to be, free to move between the twilight and the daylight, protected against Bobby Cross by Persephone’s blessing.