Whichwood

by Tahereh Mafi

  And anyway, it didn’t matter now.

  Laylee had abandoned completely the idea of hurrying back to her corpses; in fact, she no longer remembered why she’d wanted to return to them in the first place. It was a frozen, hateful place that she called home, where nothing awaited her but the emaciated remains of a decapitated life. She didn’t want to die there—not among the dead and the decay.

  No, she thought.

  She would die here, among the living, where someone might catch her body as she fell.

  I REALLY DON’T CARE FOR THIS PART

  Alice and Oliver didn’t know what to do.

  Something terrible had happened to Laylee—they knew this much for certain—but what it was they did not know, because the mordeshoor had ceased to speak. Panicked, they decided the best thing to do would be to take her home—to return her to the safety of familiar shelter—but when Alice touched Laylee’s arm in hopes of getting her attention, Laylee jerked away, her hands shaking violently as she attempted to steady herself. Oliver, alarmed, ran forward to help, but Laylee recoiled again, feverish and off balance. Alice tried to seek help from passing strangers, but people yelped and hurried away, faces pulled together in revulsion, too steeped in fear and superstition to help even a dying mordeshoor.

  Alice and Oliver were devastated.

  The two friends from Ferenwood had no way of knowing what Laylee was thinking at that strange and terrifying time. They could only attempt an assumption: Laylee was sick, yes—this they already knew—but they did not (and could not) accept that she was dying now; not here, not in this moment. But—

  What if it was true?

  If Laylee was, in fact, dying, how were they going to help her when she was refusing to be helped? How could they save her when she was refusing to be held?

  And here, dear reader, was the real complication: Alice and Oliver did not know how to help her because they did not yet understand one critical thing—

  Laylee’s greatest adversary was herself.

  Alice and Oliver were familiar with sadness and grief, but they were strangers to the kind of suffocating darkness that could corrode a person—the kind of sadness that was a sickness, the heartache that could colonize lungs and collapse bones—no, they did not understand this brand of pain, and so it was not their fault for not knowing what to do. But they’d left Laylee to the clutches of her own mind for too long and the mordeshoor, unmoored, was spiraling into despair. The children meant well, they did—but they were out of their depth.

  And Laylee, now swallowed whole by the disquiet that had devoured her limb by limb, could not see the worry in their faces or the anxious looks they passed between them. Laylee’s heart had been hermetically sealed in a reckless effort to protect it; she saw herself alone and impenetrable, a drifting body drowning at sea, and she allowed herself to sink straight into darkness, blind and unaware of the many arms reaching out to save her.

  Alice and Oliver could only hurry her along as best they could.

  The sun was nearly setting now, and they were due to meet Benyamin any moment. Perhaps, they hoped, he would have a better idea of what needed to be done.

  All the wonder of Whichwood that had been so enchanting upon first arrival was now maddening and ridiculous. The crowds were so densely packed that Alice and Oliver could hardly move sideways without stepping on someone, and it was all they could do to push themselves through the throng without losing Laylee in the process. It was getting harder to see clearly from moment to moment; daylight had been decanted into darkness and the smoky, dusky concoction meant only that the icy night air would soon enshroud them. Quickly now, they pressed on from whither they’d come, forging toward the hamam where they’d promised to reunite with Benyamin before dark.

  Seeing his friendly face awaiting theirs in all the dimness was a great comfort to the hearts of Alice and Oliver, who were now besieged by worry. Laylee had grown more insensible by the second, now refusing to even look at them, and heaven help them if they touched her. Laylee was a severed bundle of nerves, electric with pain she had no way of expressing. Oliver, who (like the others) could not make sense of what had happened to her, was doing all he could to stay upright. He would not allow himself to focus on the collapsing girl beside him, because if he were to dwell on the truth for even a moment, he was certain he would burst into tears. Her death had suddenly and horribly become real for him, and though Oliver did not have the words to explain why he felt any kind of responsibility toward the girl, he simply knew he couldn’t let it happen.

  Alice, meanwhile, had decided to blame herself for the entirety of the situation. Oliver’s pain, Laylee’s pain—all this was happening, Alice had concluded, because she had failed. It was, after all, her responsibility to have helped Laylee (it was, in fact, her sole task), and yet, she had failed, and she didn’t know how or why or even what to do to fix it. And when she finally saw Benyamin’s kind, gentle face, she merely shook her head, silent tears slipping down her face, and said, “I don’t know what I’ve done.”

  Benyamin didn’t have a chance to answer. At exactly the moment he stepped forward to ask questions and offer words of comfort, the sun disappeared beyond the horizon and the world was sapped of any lingering light.

  Yalda had properly begun.

  Lanterns set fire to the sky. Orange-milky light poked holes in the blackness, brightness consuming the dim spaces until all was caught in its hazy glow. People and places were smudged silhouettes, edges blurred by firelight. There was a moment of absolute silence before the ground underfoot rumbled fast and deep—a sound so tremendous it thundered through the sky, rising in pitch until the heavens themselves ripped open with a seismic crack—and the city was drenched in red.

  Millions of tiny pomegranate seeds rained down from the sky, and the people—thousands upon thousands of them—stood still and solemn—cups and jars and pots and buckets raised high above their heads—as the steady drumming sound of raining rubies filled the air. It was a moment of reverence and reflection. No one spoke—not a soul moved—as the snow-covered hills and forevergreen trees were painted scarlet in the night. But the rush of so much bounty sweeping fast and hard across the land made it impossible to hear, and even more impossible to speak.

  So Benyamin touched Alice’s shoulder in a quiet show of support. Alice took his hand in her left, and Oliver’s hand in her right, and the three of them stared up at the sky, silently wishing for a world where the beautiful and the terrible would stop happening at the same time.

  It was then—just as the sounds of pomegranate rain had shuddered to a stop, and just as the roaring, cheering crowds had shattered into soft noise—that the world went still in an entirely new way.

  Alice and Oliver and Benyamin had just turned to look at Laylee when her glazed eyes suddenly came back into focus. She drew in a sharp breath, stiffened, and said, “Please don’t let me fall.”

  Oliver Newbanks caught Laylee’s body, and he would not let her go. He cradled her limp, withered limbs, her head resting against his chest, and he ran, madness and desperation telling him to keep moving or die. With each resounding footfall, Laylee’s hood fell back, and her floral scarf slipped—the knot loosening at her neck—as a few rogue locks of hair fell elegantly across her forehead.

  Laylee had gone silver to her roots.

  Benyamin checked for a pulse as they charged toward the train station—Alice shouting at strangers to move out of their way—and though he struggled to find it, he finally managed to locate a weak, dull beat, and with a great gasp of relief, pronounced the mordeshoor not yet dead. Oliver, who hadn’t been able to check his silent tears, felt a sudden shock reinvigorate his heart.

  Benyamin was convinced that the best place for Laylee to recover was in the safety of his own home, where they might take care of her overnight. Taking her back to the castle, he reasoned, would make it impossible for them to remain with her; they
’d not washed any corpses this evening, and so, could not risk having their skins harvested as they slept.*

  Oliver, in a moment of clarity, asked if they shouldn’t rush her to a local doctor, but Benyamin shook his head—this was not work for a physician; Laylee needed a magician to heal her particular wounds, as she was suffering from a disease that affected mordeshoors only. But all of this was beside the point. Let us remember: No one could do what Alice had been sent to accomplish. There was no doctor, no magician, not Oliver nor Benyamin, who could do the kind of magic Alice could manufacture, and she alone would be responsible for what happened to Laylee. Laylee’s fate had been tied to Alice’s, and it was her job to save the life of this young mordeshoor. She only hoped she hadn’t waited too long.

  As soon as they arrived at the train station, Benyamin rushed to the ticket window. Alice and Oliver stood by, again checking Laylee’s pulse and steadying their hearts, while Benyamin secured their passage for four. Once done, Benyamin located an empty carriage and waved them over. Alice, Oliver, and Laylee (still bundled in his arms) quickly joined him in one of the little glass prisms, where, without the bulk of Benyamin’s barrow (which, poor thing, he’d optimistically stowed in a public locker in anticipation of an evening of fun), the four of them were able to settle comfortably; there was just enough room for Oliver to lay down Laylee’s body on the velvet bench. Oliver’s arms were shaking from the strain of having carried her such a long way, but it was the look on his face, desperate and afraid, that worried Alice most.

  Wordlessly, faces full of expectation, Benyamin and Oliver turned to look at Alice. They three had discussed the possibility of this exact situation just hours prior, and it was hard to believe the occasion was already upon them. No one had dared to imagine things would fall apart so horribly in such a short period of time.

  No matter.

  This was it, the moment Alice had been primed for. It would be an arduous, exhausting job—Laylee’s revival would be slow and steady, the kind that might take hours or days, depending entirely on the depth of the wound—and Alice could only hope she would do it right. So she fell to her knees without a word and, drawing in a deep and careful and nervous breath, took the mordeshoor’s cold, gray hands in hers and began to push color back into Laylee’s body.

  Meanwhile, the whole of Whichwood was celebrating in the streets, sharing food and drink and dancing to the songs they found in their hearts. The people had no idea what sensations were still in store for them, or which four children were to blame for their impending troubles. No one—not even Benyamin—knew the desperate state of the dead Laylee had left behind. And though there were three friends who might have cared, they were so preoccupied with saving Laylee’s life that they couldn’t be bothered to think of saving her corpses, too.

  At present, said children clasped hands in a train carriage, the glass windows shimmering in the moonlight, as roaring winter winds shuddered against the doors. Even from their carriage the children could hear the cheers of thousands of happy voices: It was a joyous, rollicking crowd still celebrating life and all its glory—but it was what the children could not hear that night that was so important. Back on the peninsula, dear reader, in a shed dark and oft forgot, the spirits of a neglected lot seethed at the injustice of their unremembered deaths.

  Laylee had gotten their days wrong, you see.

  In fact, her mind had been so lost of late that she’d confused days and months altogether. The truth was that her dead had reached their expiration dates several weeks ago—which meant they could’ve gone rampaging for human skin several weeks ago. It was only out of respect for Laylee that the spirits had remained amenable. But she’d now been gone both day and night, and her sad souls, feeling fully forgotten (you will remember that a ghost is a terribly sensitive sort of creature), could be obedient no longer. They shook their chains until their shackles broke and trees bent sideways to let the spirits pass. They had big plans for tonight, the specters did; they would howl and rage against the machinations that kept them fettered to their molting, festering skin, and they swore on the graves of those they passed that they’d wear new faces by morning.

  The troubles of the evening had only just begun.

  Alice had been doing the best she could, but Oliver was not satisfied.

  He tried to be gentle—to express himself delicately and with consideration for Alice’s feelings—but he wasn’t quite able to cut the sting of his words. He didn’t understand the processes necessary to saving Laylee in this moment, and he couldn’t see the level of concentration and careful effort it took for Alice to help the mordeshoor.

  It was a delicate dance, you see, to recover Laylee without Alice expending too much of herself in the process. And reviving Laylee could have other side effects, too. Namely: Alice had to be careful not to leave too much of herself—her own heart, her own spirit—in her fading friend. She tried to explain as much to Oliver, but he was too overcome by emotion to be persuaded to think rationally. Though his respect for Alice encouraged him to be patient, he’d secretly hoped Alice would be able to fix Laylee right away. Instead, to his great dismay, at least half an hour had passed and Laylee looked much the same.

  The damage, Alice was realizing, was deep indeed.

  Laylee’s hands were still gray—though Alice was convinced they were at least a shade brighter than before—despite her careful and gentle infusions of color.

  Still! There was no need to panic! Not yet, anyway.

  Alice was not giving up on Laylee—not so long as the mordeshoor’s heart was still beating—and for the first half of their journey home, Alice’s steady, unrelenting perseverance and Laylee’s gently kicking heart were the only comforts the friends had to hold on to. Benyamin, who was checking every few minutes for signs of life, celebrated each affirmation with a sigh of relief and a triumphant announcement that her heartbeats were getting stronger.

  This was how things went on for a while—Alice working, Oliver worrying, and Benyamin doing his best to deliver good news in the interim—until they were just over an hour into their journey (with thirty minutes to go), and Benyamin abruptly ceased checking Laylee’s pulse.

  His many-legged friends had been worrying at his ear for some time now, but he’d been doing his best to tune them out, determined to focus on the task at hand. The problem was, his insects often worried about him too much—and Benyamin had learned to occasionally disregard their overly protective instincts. Tonight, he suspected they took issue with his recent unusual behavior. (It was strange, after all, for Benyamin to be spending so much time with two strangers and a dying girl, and they were right to be concerned.) But he’d no time to address their questions at present, and so he’d relegated their clicking sounds to the back of his mind until, eventually, they subsided altogether.

  At first, Benyamin took their silence as a sign of progress. But there was another part of him—much like a parent made suspicious by the unexpected obedience of a child—that suddenly worried if everything was okay.

  Reader, it was not.

  Benyamin’s entomological army had its own lead colonel, a spider by the name of Haftpa. (You met Haftpa just once before—he was the muscular spider who scuttled up Alice’s nose.) Some years ago, Haftpa had been involved in a tragic incident involving a house cat who’d intended to eat him outright. Haftpa, who was only a child at the time, fought valiantly for his life and, to everyone’s great amazement, tottered away with his dignity and seven of his eight legs. His triumph was spoken of in hushed, reverent tones, and he quickly advanced to become the foremost sentinel in Benyamin’s brood of insects. But Haftpa was not only a highly respected spider—he was the most admired, too. He was one of the first creatures to burst forth from Benyamin’s flesh, and, unlike the many others who quickly fled to find homes elsewhere, Haftpa stayed behind to become one of Benyamin’s first real friends. So when Haftpa scuttled forth for a private moment, Benyamin,
so sensitive to the wishes of his colonel, could not deny this request—especially as he began to worry that there was, indeed, something he needed to be worrying about.

  Haftpa had heard rumblings.

  Several of his friends had built their webs in the hinges of the train, and when Haftpa had stopped in to say hello (as was his habit), he found them with curious stories to tell. In honor of the evening’s festivities, the train had been making more stops than usual—and tonight, as they trekked past one neighborhill after another, they’d seen unusual things appear in the moonlight. They’d heard unusual stirrings and sounds.

  “What kinds of things?” asked Benyamin quietly, who was attempting to stay calm.

  Haftpa lifted one small leg in Laylee’s direction, clicking quietly as he did. “They sent a warning to you, friend-Benyamin, to be careful in your dealings with the mordeshoor.”

  Benyamin felt his stomach heave. “But why?” he whispered, worried Alice and Oliver might overhear. “You don’t mean—the spirits—”

  Haftpa blinked his eight eyes. “We can’t be entirely sure of what’s happened, friend-Benyamin, as our kind doesn’t speak much with theirs. We do not fear the darkness the way your dead do. I know only this: The spirits have left hallowed ground. They will be looking to harvest skins tonight, and there’s little to be done if the mordeshoor dies. Your humans must be warned.”

  Benyamin was horrified.

  He knew Haftpa would not lie to him—that in fact he would do whatever was necessary to protect him—but Benyamin couldn’t understand how any of this had come to pass. How had the spirits managed to escape?

  Benyamin knew a little of the mordeshoor’s business, but he didn’t know all of it, and so he had no way of understanding, at the moment, what had transpired to make any of this possible. He did, however, understand that something had to be done. And soon.