Whichwood

by Tahereh Mafi

  “Right, good then,” said Oliver, directing his words toward Laylee. “I’m glad to see you’re feeling better.”

  Laylee stared at him and said nothing.

  Oliver cleared his throat. “You are—feeling better? Aren’t you?”

  Laylee resisted the impulse to roll her eyes.

  Now that she was back among the living, Laylee found she vastly preferred the company of her dead. She couldn’t believe she was going to ask these people for help.

  “I’m fine,” she said coldly.

  And then, remembering that it was in her best interest to finally stop hating everyone, she cleared her throat and said, with great difficulty, “I mean—I meant to apologize . . . for running off like that earlier. It was . . . I may have overreacted.”

  Silence.

  Then, all at once—

  “Not at all,” said Oliver, who was inexplicably pink around the ears. “It was—yes—it was a very difficult evening—”

  “Of course!” cried Alice, all smiles. “And we’re just—oh, it’s so good to have you back!”

  Laylee leveled a dark look at her.

  Alice flushed crimson.

  Laylee winced and looked away, forgetting again to be nice to the strange children. Laylee needed something from them now, and she knew they might not follow her back to her corpses if she didn’t learn to at least pretend to be kind.

  “In any case,” said Oliver brightly, “we were just about to head into town. Would you care to join us?”

  Laylee raised her eyebrows, stunned, and turned her gaze on Benyamin; the insect-boy smiled as if to endorse Oliver’s invitation, but Laylee shook her head. She cast a careful look in Alice and Oliver’s direction and said, “What exactly have they told you?” She was talking only to Benyamin now. “Do you know yet why they’re here?”

  “Oh yes,” said Benyamin, whose eyes seemed to glitter with barely restrained delight. “Such an odd pair, aren’t they? They said they were from Ferenwood. That they’d come all the way here just to help you wash your dead.” Benyamin tilted his head. “In fact, Alice was just telling me all about your evening’s escapades.”

  Laylee felt her frozen shoulders thaw. Surprise unclenched her face. And when she next looked Alice in the eye, she said, with great urgency, “Why would you confide such things to a stranger?”

  Alice felt her fingers twitch; she wasn’t sure, but she felt that this had to be a trick question. Benyamin was one of the most interesting strangers she’d ever met, and besides, he seemed plenty trustworthy. But the mordeshoor was still waiting for an answer. She was looking expectantly at Alice, and Alice faltered.

  “Well,” she said finally. “It was the truth, wasn’t it?”

  “But why risk your safety for the truth?”

  “Safety? What do y—”

  “You know nothing of this land or its people or what your confessions could cost you!” Laylee cried. “The people of Whichwood,” she said darkly, “are not to be trusted.”

  “And whyever not?”

  “Never mind why not.”

  “Begging your pardon,” Benyamin interrupted. “But I think I can speak for myself when I say that I’m perfectly capable of being trusted.”

  Laylee clenched her jaw. “Well, we shall see,” she said. “Won’t we?”

  Oliver clapped his hands together. “Well!” he said, a touch too loudly. “Now that’s over with—shall we all head into town, then? Mmm?”

  “No.” Laylee looked him in the eye. “You and your pale friend said you would help me”—she glanced at Alice—“and now I’m here, asking for your help. I have forty more dead that need washing, and I will require your assistance as soon as possible.”

  Oliver blinked.

  Alice’s mouth fell open.

  Benyamin was leaning against his wheelbarrow, watching the scene unfold with great interest.

  “Well?” said Laylee, irritated. “What’s the problem?”

  Alice was the first to speak. “You have—you have forty more dead people to wash? Forty more corpses to clean?”

  Laylee felt a knot form in her throat. She hadn’t imagined that they would turn her away.

  “And we have to wash them all today?” Oliver said, with whispered horror. “All forty of them?”

  Laylee felt something inside of her break. “Forget I asked,” she said, stumbling backward. “Never mind. I’ll be fine. You—you offered, so I—I thought—but never mind. I’d better get back to work. Good-bye.”

  Oliver caught her arm as she turned to leave.

  “Please,” he said earnestly. “Don’t misunderstand me. We’re happy to help. But is there any chance we might be able to take a small break before we dive back in?”

  “A break?” Laylee blinked.

  “Yes,” said Oliver. He tried to suppress a smile and failed. “You know—perhaps we could eat lunch? Or take a bath? Or maybe find ourselves a fresh set of clothes—”

  “I don’t take breaks.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” said Benyamin, who laughed aloud. He looked at Laylee out of the corner of his eye. “Of all the days to start, let it be tonight! The festivities for Yalda begin this evening, and they’re sure to be spectacular.”

  Yalda.

  Laylee had nearly forgotten.

  “I vote we take our new friends into town and enjoy the evening for a bit,” said Benyamin.

  “That sounds wonderful!” cried Alice. “I’d really—”

  “No,” said Laylee, eyes wild. “No, I can’t. I have to get back to work—”

  “Your work can’t wait a few hours?” This, from Oliver.

  Laylee’s lips parted in confusion. “No,” she said, but for the first time, she didn’t seem sure. A few hours? Could she possibly spare a few hours? Oh, her bones were so tired.

  “How about this,” said Benyamin. “If you come into town with us—and enjoy the festivities for a bit—I will personally accompany you back to the castle and lend a hand with the washing. Then you’ll have three extra helpers.” He smiled. “How does that sound?”

  Laylee was of two minds. The weathered, beaten mordeshoor within her was at war with the thirteen-year-old girl who still lived in her heart. She wanted desperately to be normal—to have friends with whom she might attend a local celebration—but she could not loose herself from the business to which she’d been bolted.

  Still.

  The promise of a third helper was more than she could resist. And so, slowly—reluctantly—she relented.

  “I’m thrilled to hear it!” Oliver threw an eager arm around Laylee’s shoulder (which she quickly shoved off) and said, “Because while I see you’ve had a nice long bath and a fresh change of clothes, we”—he motioned to himself and Alice—“are crawling with filth and, quite frankly, if I don’t do something about it soon I’m going to rip these clothes off right here and now, and then, I reckon, you’ll all be sorry.”

  Alice laughed and nodded in eager agreement, and Benyamin smiled at Alice like she spun stars for a living, and Oliver yanked off a dirty sock and flung it over his head, and Laylee—

  Laylee was so abruptly and unexpectedly entertained that, for the first time in a long time, she had only to pretend a little to be kind. It had been too many years since she’d spoken to so many persons at once, and she could hardly believe she still knew how to do it. Her arms were decaying, her vision was graying, her hair had lost its luster and her bones were bent in all the wrong places and somehow, even now, Laylee had never been more relieved to be alive.

  Another small shoot of hope had shoved through the cracks in her heart, and the sudden rush of feeling had left her a little light-headed—and a little reckless. And so she postponed her washing (despite her better judgment) for later, and instead accepted an invitation to go into town and have a bit of fun with chi
ldren her own age. It was a decadence she’d dispensed with long ago, and its lure was too much to deny any longer.

  Just a few hours, she promised herself.

  After all, it was Yalda—the greatest celebration of the year—and Laylee wouldn’t mind eating one last pomegranate before she died.

  The train station was a many-roofed magenta house, bezel-set with hundreds of octagonal windows. It was a wooden relic that had aged gracefully with the seasons, and its ornate wood panels and intricate moldings made it clear that great cost and care had once built this small center of transport. It stood strong and dusky in the snow—determined to creak with dignity as the wind shook its ancient beams—while skeleton trees stood tall on every side, bare branches hung with fresh icicles and hooting owls. As for the train itself, it would be arriving shortly.

  The children marched toward the station, Alice’s heart racing, Oliver’s teeth chattering, Laylee’s bones clicking, and Benyamin’s brow furrowing as he wheeled his barrow up the slight incline. The massive golden doors opened at their approach, and the four children hurried inside to take refuge from the cold.

  Laylee was still adjusting to human company.

  The experience was not altogether unpleasant, but currently she felt as though she’d grown three unwanted limbs and hadn’t yet learned how to manage them. Alice, Oliver, and even Benyamin (who understood that, for the moment, it would be best to defer to Laylee on all things) looked to her for their every need and question, and she was feeling both flattered and revolted by their attentions. Just now, she hadn’t even a moment to dust off her cloak before Alice was touching her and asking whether she might have time to use the bathroom before the train arrived. It was an innocent inquiry, but it was quite a lot to ask of Laylee, who’d spent the last two years of her life in near-perfect isolation. She felt unqualified to answer such a question. How could she be expected to speculate on the bathroom habits of another person?

  Benyamin was kind enough to shuffle Alice away before any harm was done, but that meant Oliver was suddenly left alone with Laylee, and for long enough to make the both of them uncomfortable.

  They took their seats at one of the many long pews stretching the length of the station, and Laylee was finally able to unburden herself of her bones. She dropped the heavy sack onto the space next to her, and the disturbing sounds of a dismantled skeleton echoed throughout the building.

  “So,” said Oliver, clearing his throat. “What’s, um, what’s in the bag?”

  Laylee, who had not been looking at Oliver, made a great show of turning in her seat. She pulled back her hood and leveled him with a careful, probing stare—a stare so unsettling that he abruptly stood, promptly fell over, and quickly stumbled to his feet. He was breathing heavily as he stalked off, mumbling something about excuse me and beg your pardon and needing to speak with Alice straightaway.

  Laylee covered her face with one hand and smiled.

  She was beginning to like Oliver.

  The train station was entirely empty save their four-person party and the one lady working behind the ticket window. The lady’s name was Sana Suleiman, and she’d worked the ticket window for as long as Laylee could remember. But Sana did not live on the peninsula with Laylee and Benyamin, and more important, she hated her job. She thought Laylee was terrifying and Benyamin horrifying, and though she’d asked management—on at least seventeen different occasions—to have her transferred to another station, all of her requests were met with silence.

  (A quick note here: Train tickets didn’t cost money. Transportation in Whichwood was considered a public service and was therefore subsidized by the town; the tickets were just for keeping track of things.)

  Laylee walked up to the ticket window just as Sana was chewing on a sizable chunk of her own hair. Alarmed, Sana spat the hair from her mouth, sprang to attention, and spoke without ever meeting Laylee’s gaze.

  “Hello my name is Sana, and I’ll be your ticket master today. It’s our business here at the Whichwood train station, Peninsula division, to make your travel dreams come true. May I interest you in a dream come true today?”

  Laylee, who’d not only known Sana all her life but, more critically, knew they had only ten minutes before their train arrived (as it arrived every two hours on the hour), was even more curt than usual.

  “Four tickets into town, please,” was all she said.

  But four tickets was three more than usual, and this was an anomaly Sana could not ignore. She turned to look Laylee in the eye for the first time in over two years and stared, unblinking, for five solid seconds.

  Laylee tapped the window with a gloved finger and spoke again. “Four tickets, Sana.”

  Sana jumped, remembering herself, and nodded several times before ducking out of sight. She reemerged with four silky green tickets (which she slid through a slot in the window), and in a strange, uncomfortably sincere voice she said, “Is there anything else I might help you with today?”

  Laylee narrowed her eyes, scooped up her tickets, and walked away.

  Alice, Oliver, and Benyamin had regrouped.

  They were huddled over Benyamin’s barrow of saffron flowers; Alice was prodding one of the purple blooms with her finger while Oliver spoke quickly and quietly under his breath. Benyamin was frowning as he listened, and he was just about to respond when Laylee approached. Seeing her, he forced a cheerful smile and changed the subject.

  “Anyway,” he said loudly, “we’ll get the two of you cleaned up straightaway and then we’ll see about getting you some proper winter clothes, won’t we?” He smiled at Laylee. “What do you say? Don’t you think we can set them up nicely? They’ll need a good pair of boots at the very least.”

  But it was Alice who responded. She was pointing solemnly at Benyamin’s bare feet when she said, “You mark my words, Benyamin: If anyone is getting a new pair of boots today, it’s going to be you.”

  Benyamin blushed to the roots of his hair. He was both touched and mortified, and he hadn’t the faintest idea how to respond. Instead, he stared—and quite a bit too much.

  At Alice, that is.

  They were awkward, stupid stares, clumsy stares that only grew in number as the seconds ticked by. Too soon, Alice was angry beyond words. In fact, she was horrified.

  Alice had had a lifetime of experience dealing with people who stared at her for too long. She’d always known she looked different from everyone else; she knew her extreme paleness often scared and confused people, and it made them cruel to her. But after struggling for so long with accepting her differences, she’d vowed to never again allow anyone to make her feel bad about who she was or what she looked like. Not ever. She had too much pride to waste her patience on the ignorance of insensitive people.

  Remembering this now, she glared at Benyamin and turned away. She’d thought Benyamin was a nice enough person; she’d thought he had a trustworthy face and a pleasant demeanor, and she’d felt comfortable with him right away. But now she was sorry for having exercised such poor judgment.

  Oliver, who was still lost in thought over their group’s brief, heated discussion, had looked up just long enough to make sense of the tension contracting before him now. He was, as I mentioned some pages ago, a sharp fourteen-year-old boy, and he was fully wise to the look in Benyamin’s eye. And now, understanding their silent exchange, he couldn’t help but be stunned by what he saw.

  Oliver had never seen anyone take a romantic interest in Alice before. And though he’d occasionally wondered what that sort of thing might be like—ultimately, the thought of Alice as anything but a friend made as much sense to him as wearing a sweater to go swimming.

  (His loss. I think Alice is lovely.)

  In any case, things had gone suddenly quiet, and Laylee couldn’t understand why. She’d only just rejoined them, and already no one was speaking. Alice was frowning at the floor, arms crossed against her
chest, Benyamin was looking suddenly stunned and bewildered, and Oliver, who’d taken all of thirty seconds to stop caring about Alice and Benyamin, was once again so lost in thought about a difficult truth he’d recently uncovered that he could focus on nothing else.

  Laylee, meanwhile, had been duly ignored.

  Realizing this, the young mordeshoor chose that moment to pass out the train tickets—hoping the gesture would inspire new conversation—but their earlier camaraderie would not be revived. In any other situation, Laylee wouldn’t have minded (as she had no great passion for casual conversation), but there was something about her presence that appeared to instill a quiet terror in the others, and she wondered then if she was the problem—if, in fact, they simply wouldn’t speak comfortably in her company. And Laylee was surprised to find that this bothered her.

  Which made her a bit mean.

  “I’m not your mother,” she said sharply, apropos of nothing. “You may carry on talking about whatever it is you normally talk about without worrying I’ll disapprove.”

  But just then came the sound of a loud, joyous whistle, and Alice, Oliver, and Benyamin were saved the trouble of having to respond. Bells rang out across the station, and the rush and rumble of frenzy (that always precedes the arrival of a train) sent their hearts into motion. This was it—this was their cue. Benyamin took hold of his barrow, Laylee shouldered her bones, Oliver took Alice’s hand, and the four of them charged out the doors and into the cold toward an evening they could never undo.

  The train was alarmingly familiar.

  Alice and Oliver had arrived in Whichwood on a remarkably similar contraption; the only difference, of course, was that their transport had traveled underwater.

  The iteration before them appeared to be an endless string of pentagonal prisms built entirely of glass panels and held together with brass hinges. Each prism was connected by yet more brass hinges, and the lot of them were set upon enormous brass wheels that sat firmly upon the tracks built into the ground. It seemed like a modern, reliable version of the ancient apparatus they’d arrived in—which inspired only a little bit of confidence in our wary travelers—and, sadly, that would have to be enough. Alice and Oliver cringed and shrugged (and hoped these glass carriages would not shatter) as they followed Laylee and Benyamin in their search for empty seats.