by Tahereh Mafi
This was how they found themselves, all forty ghostly bodies, crowded cheek by jowl (figuratively, of course) in the cramped home of Benyamin Felankasak, where they had finally found their mordeshoor. Now, had Laylee been awake, she might’ve been able to tell someone that Benyamin’s small home had been infiltrated by a large group of angry ghosts, but as it happened, she was not. And so there was no one at all to explain the sudden drop in temperature or the unexpected departure of the door from its frame.
The humans in Benyamin’s home could only wonder at what had happened, and it wasn’t until Haftpa spoke quietly in the boy’s ear that anyone could understand enough to be afraid.
The ghosts had been waiting around for at least five minutes, shouting their frustrations for anyone to listen (and not understanding why Laylee would not look at them) when Benyamin’s sentinel finally offered to act as liaison between the dead and the living.
Animals and insects had no problems interacting with the unseen; they spoke a common language that humans were only occasionally made privy to, as their worlds were run with more order and compassion than ours: Namely, the nonhuman world did not hunt the creatures they feared; they simply stayed away from them. And now, though Haftpa had never had much to discuss with a ghost, he was willing to act as a neutral party in order to facilitate some kind of goodwill. He quickly recognized the head of the group—a tall, brooding ghost-woman named Roksana—and explained the situation: Laylee was dying; the other children were trying to resuscitate her; they didn’t know how long it would be until she woke.
Meanwhile, Benyamin was (hastily) explaining to the humans what had happened.
“What?” This, from Benyamin’s mother. “What do you mean the ghosts escaped hallowed ground? How is that possible?” she cried, nearly falling out of bed in horror.
“They’re here right now?” asked Oliver, who’d gone pale. “In—in here? Right now?”
“What do they want?” said Alice, who’d gotten to her feet. “Are they upset?”
Haftpa reported that, yes, they were very upset. They wanted to know what had happened to their mordeshoor. They wanted to know why she’d left them alone for so long. And they wanted to know whether she would be coming back.
Benyamin hurried to explain exactly what had happened to Laylee, but instead of de-escalating the situation, Benyamin’s explanations had apparently made things worse.
Roksana shouted out so angrily in response that Haftpa jumped up, startled, and spun an unexpected web in the process. She was enraged to hear that the mordeshoor had been left to die like this. The dead were nothing if not soulful creatures, and they felt great pain and pity for the mordeshoor that they, the ghosts, had taken for granted. Laylee had been treated poorly by her people, and now an entire other civilization of beings would suffer as a result. What would happen to the dead once their only remaining mordeshoor died? (Never mind the crazy father, said Roksana.) What did the people of Whichwood think would happen? Had they expected that they could just discard this young girl and her position with no care or thought to her well-being? Did they not see the shortsightedness of their own actions?
This thirteen-year-old girl had been left to suffer all alone, with no one in their busy, bustling city stopping long enough to care. The ghosts, understanding this all at once, were no longer simply angry—they were enraged to the point of asphyxiation. Roksana could hardly speak for all her fury. And she and her ghosts huddled around Laylee’s body, suddenly sorry for ever having given her a hard time. They knew they could be annoying, jumping out of corners and being occasionally absurd and unkind—but they were desperately bored for conversation, and Laylee was the only human with whom they could interact. She kept their secrets, and helped soothe the pain of passing. She was the only living person to care what happened to her people when they passed on, and the ghosts valued her dedication to them.
So this?
This would never do.
Haftpa had quickly explained Roksana’s sudden outburst, and Benyamin, who hurried to carry out the translation to the others, had begun to whisper the words, so terrified was he of what Haftpa had told him. The ghosts had come to find Laylee in hopes of making amends, but now, having discovered the truth of how terribly she’d been treated, they sought to exact revenge.
The ghosts’ consciences would be clear tonight.
It was clear to them that by mistreating Laylee, the Whichwoodians did not respect the rites and rituals that affected their dead and, family or not, the spirits would not defend those who’d stood silently by as their unseen world was plagued by injustice.
“Wait,” cried Benyamin, who was now beseeching the ghosts blindly. “Please—we’re doing the best we can to help her—we just don’t know how long it will take—”
“We recognize your efforts,” said Roksana, and Haftpa hurried to translate. “As a thank-you for your loyalty to the mordeshoor, we will not harm the four of you here tonight. But we will not grant the same protection to the people celebrating in the streets. They dance and feast while their mordeshoor dies!” Roksana cried, shaking her fist. “This, we can never forgive.”
In the time it took Haftpa to translate the rest of her message, the ghosts had already gone, charging wrathfully into the night—
Heaven help the humans whose paths they crossed.
“What do we do?” cried Alice, who was looking from Laylee to Benyamin to his mother to Oliver and back again. She couldn’t possibly abandon Laylee, not now, not at this critical juncture, but it was also true that they couldn’t just wait here while the ghosts charged into the city to strip innocent people of their flesh. “What do we do?” she said again, when no one responded.
Oliver opened his mouth in an attempt to speak, but no words came out. Benyamin looked to Haftpa for advice, but the little spider wasn’t sure what to say. Madarjoon was the only one who didn’t seem too stunned to speak. She was shaken, yes, but she hadn’t lost her wits, and it was her quiet, adult authority that rang true and clear in their young bones when she said simply, “You must go. At once.”
“But what about—” said Alice.
“You must take her, too.”
“Take her with us?” said Oliver, eyes wide. “How?”
“Put her on the train and take her with you,” said Madarjoon. “You will make it work; you cannot leave the mordeshoor behind. Alice will stay with her, healing her as you go, and hopefully, before the end of the night, she will have been able to help the girl enough to get her eyes open.”
“But why?” said Benyamin, who was seeing something in his mother’s eyes that only he, her son, could recognize. “Why do we need to take her with us?”
“Because,” said Madarjoon, “once her eyes are open, you’ll be better able to see what’s happening.”
“What do you mean?” said Oliver.
“Laylee can see the ghosts,” said Madarjoon. “She knows them personally. That much was made clear tonight.”
Benyamin blinked, surprised. Oliver didn’t know what to say. Alice looked at the unconscious mordeshoor and said, “Yes, it would make sense if she did. Though I wonder why she never said anything about it before.”
“Because she’s a smart girl,” said Madarjoon. “She knows better than to make that kind of information public. It’s hard enough being the caretaker of dead bodies; but to have to act as liaison between human and spirit? Can you imagine how many grieving people would harangue her about communicating with the spirits of their loved ones?” Madarjoon shook her head. “No, it’s better that she kept it to herself. But the ghosts made it clear tonight that they knew her personally—that they’d talked before, that they cared for her. That sort of relationship cannot come from nothing. Mark my words: That girl can see the dead—and can speak with them, too. And if you’re going to have any luck at all tonight, you’re going to need her with her eyes open. So go. And hurry. You have no tim
e.”
Benyamin checked the clock and said anxiously, “But the trains won’t come for another hour—what do we—”
And Madarjoon grabbed for her two canes—resting just to the side of her bed—and pulled herself up, with great effort, to stand on weak and withered legs. She wore a long pink nightgown with a ruffled collar and scalloped hem, her hair tied back with a small silk bandana. At her unexpected movement, Benyamin rushed forward, alarmed, but Madarjoon held up a hand to stop him.
“Come along, children,” she said carefully. “Let me do the only kind of magic I’m good for anymore.”
“But, Madarjoon,” Benyamin cried, running forward, “you’re not strong enough—”
She cut him off with her cane. “A piece of advice, sweet son of mine: Never, ever again tell a woman she’s not strong enough.”
“But I didn’t mean—I never—”
“I know.” She smiled. “Now come along.” She glanced at Oliver and Alice. “All of you.”
“Where are we going?” asked Alice, hurrying forward.
“We’ll get to that in a minute. Hurry up, hurry up,” she said, hobbling forward to prod Oliver with her cane. “Come on, then. We haven’t got all night.” Oliver jumped up, startled, and reached for Laylee, preparing to lift her into his arms again when Benyamin’s mother cried, “Get a barrow, boy! No need to waste time flexing your muscles.”
Oliver flushed, embarrassed for a reason he couldn’t quite explain, while Benyamin ran off to collect one of the extra wheelbarrows he used for his saffron harvest. The children lined the rough interior with pillows and bedsheets, and then, carefully, settled Laylee inside, taking care to tuck in her bag of bones beside her. Suddenly, for just a second, her eyelids fluttered.
Alice gasped.
The four of them peered in, looking for another sign of life, but this time Laylee was still.
“Everyone’s got their coats?” Madarjoon said loudly, looking over the heads of the children. “You’ve all used the toilet? No? Well, best hold it in. Come on, then—let’s carry on.”
And they shuffled outside into the cold, biting night and hiked in taut, nervous silence for a matter of at least fifteen minutes, through hills and valleys of thigh-high snow (through which Benyamin had no idea how his mother managed), until they reached the very edge of their quiet peninsula, and could hear the ferocious waves lashing against the cliffs.
Alice and Oliver were just shy of terrified. They had no interest at all in summoning what was left of their glass elevator, and they had no idea whether that was what Madarjoon had been hoping to find. In fact, they sincerely hoped it wasn’t, because if it was, they didn’t know how they were going to explain to her that they’d broken it.
Luckily, that wasn’t at all what Madarjoon was thinking.
She hobbled out to the very precipice, a point nearly invisible in the blackness of night. The children were too afraid to follow her, and when Alice whispered her worries to Benyamin, he assured her that everything would be okay. Madarjoon had, in fact, done this many times before.
There was a reason, you see, why Benyamin had never had to explain his strange relationship with the many-legged world—and it was because his mother never needed an explanation. She, too, had a special relationship with the nonhuman world, and she would call upon that friendship now, at a time she needed it most.
When Madarjoon stepped back from the ledge some moments later, it was only a matter of seconds before the sea—already churning with great and tremendous turbulence—began to lurch ever more tremendously. As the sea rocked back and forth with the dizzying force of a thunderclap, from its tremulous depths came a sudden and unmistakable expulsion of air, and a sound like a blasted rocket—crack!—snapped the seas wide open.
A whale as large as a pirate ship bobbed at the surface of the water, its large fin slapping hello to an old friend. Madarjoon spoke quickly and quietly to her comrade, and the children, struck still with awe, stood silently by, waiting only to be told what to do. There was little time to spare, so the formalities were dispensed with. The whale-friend took only a moment to slap its fin in acknowledgment to whatever secret thing Benyamin’s mother had said to him and, a moment later, yawned open his mouth to allow them aboard.
Benyamin reassured his stupefied friends that he’d done this before. “It’s perfectly safe, I assure you—”
“Come along, children,” said Madarjoon. “We’ve no time to assuage your feelings. There are lives to be saved.” She took another step toward the whale, but Benyamin threw out an arm to stop her.
“Are you—I mean,” Benyamin stammered, frozen, “are you coming with us?”
“I know you’re a little old for my company,” said his mother with a smile, “but I’m afraid it’s best if I come along for the night, considering the circumstances.”
“But are you sure you’ll be alright?” he said nervously. “You’re not too weak to—”
“What did I say to you about accusing a woman of weakness? Do I look weak to you? I carried your bones inside of me, young man. A person doesn’t need legs to be strong. I’ve got enough heart for ten legs, and that’ll carry me farther than these limbs ever did.”
And without another word, she stepped off the edge of the cliff and fell, with a whistling whoosh, right into the open mouth of a humpback whale. Stunned and humbled, Alice and Oliver and Benyamin hastened to follow. They each held on to a different side of the wheelbarrow carrying their friend and, with a nervous intake of breath, took a running leap off the cliff—
And fell softly into the jaws of their sea captain.
As you might have expected, it was not a comfortable journey. In fact, it might be an understatement to say that whales are not ideal for transporting humans. But this whale was doing their group a huge favor, so they would have to make do with what they had. The group didn’t speak much as they jostled one another in the wet, sucking maw of the sea creature, as there was little positive to say. Each was lost in his or her own mind, every person thinking thoughts more diverse and interesting than the next—and as the conscious among them stood tall and still in the moist quiet of the whale’s mouth, it was all they could do to hold on to one another and hope they’d make it to town before the ghosts did.
But our protagonists would not be successful tonight.
I will tell you this now: It would be impossible to beat the ghosts to town. The spirits had a head start and, even though the whale moved at a tremendous clip under the sea, they would still be deposited at the edge of the open water—certainly closer than before, but still a bit far from the center of town. By the time they clambered out of the whale’s mouth and onto hard ground, they would still need to travel another twenty minutes or so by foot before reaching the Yalda celebrations.
It seemed a fruitless effort—with one exception.
Alice had not been idle. She’d been working with the mordeshoor through light and darkness, on land and at sea, pulsing color and magic back into her limp limbs until the little progress she made begat more progress, and soon, the mordeshoor was healing at an exponential rate. She was healing now in much the same way she fell ill: Each milestone was bigger. First a knuckle, then three, then four fingers, then the whole hand; by the time they reached land, Alice had managed to undo the gray as far as Laylee’s elbows, and though the mordeshoor was still too weak to stand, she was able at least to flutter open her eyes.
It was, as I’ve mentioned several times already, a very dark night. This darkness, plus their urgency to shove forward toward the city center, distracted the rest of the group from the miracles being performed beside them. So you might understand why it took a moment before anyone realized that Laylee had opened her eyes.
(Though it was, understandably, Alice who saw her first.)
“Laylee!” she cried, her heart swelling with joy. “You’re awake!”
“S
he’s awake?” said Oliver, hardly daring to breathe.
“She’s awake!” said Benyamin, who turned to his mother with pride.
“I knew she’d open her eyes in time,” said Madarjoon, who was hobbling along as best she could, huffing and puffing and never complaining, grateful to be on her feet again.
Laylee was terribly confused. It took a lot of explaining what had happened to her (and why she was lying in a wheelbarrow as they pushed her through empty midnight streets) before she finally clicked everything together, and when she did, she was stunned.
“You saved my life?” she said to Alice. “But how?”
“It’s what I came here for, remember?” said Alice, eyes shining in the moonlight. “I said I’d come to help you. We all did,” she added, beaming at her friends (old and new) with great happiness.
“So—you knew?” said Laylee. “You’ve always known I was going to die?”
Alice shook her head. “I didn’t. But someone must’ve known; otherwise, the Ferenwood Elders wouldn’t have sent me here. They must have heard about you from someone in Whichwood. They made a great exception to send me here,” Alice explained. “We don’t normally travel to other magical lands.”
“So strange,” said Laylee, who already seemed exhausted. She let her head rest against the wheelbarrow as Oliver pushed her forward, and said only “so strange” once more, before her eyes closed again.
No matter. They pushed on, their spirits higher than ever; it was a great help to their hearts to know that Laylee was healing—and that, hopefully, she would survive—especially as they charged forward into the endless winter night, desperate to save the people of Whichwood from an untimely end. It was an unlikely group of individuals upon whom depended the salvation of an entire city, but the insect boy, his injured mother, his colorless friend, her curious companion, and the nearly dead girl asleep in the wheelbarrow would have to do. It was, admittedly, hard to imagine them besting a crowd of angry ghosts, but they would at least have to try.
