Lily Whitmore's Arc

Chapter 2 of 17

Ollie moved between the pines like he knew every root. Lily drifted behind him. She tried to keep her eyes on the back of his gray sweater, because when she looked at anything else, the forest slid. A trunk she had just passed was suddenly ahead of her. A patch of ferns repeated on both sides of the path. Her ghost-sight would not hold the trees still. "Don't look sideways," Ollie said, without turning. "Look at me. That's all." She tried. But a wind she could not feel bent the branches the wrong way, and for a moment the ground itself seemed to tilt. When she looked up again, Ollie was farther ahead than he should have been. She hurried, and the gap did not close. The path between them stretched like pulled dough. She called his name. He turned, and his mouth moved, but the sound arrived late and wrong, as if under water. Something small and warm cut across the trail. A girl in a green hood, maybe ten, with a braid and heavy boots. She stopped when she saw Lily, then looked past her at Ollie. She did not seem surprised by ghosts. "You're drifting," the girl said. "Your feet aren't where your eyes are." She pulled a glass flask from her satchel. Green light moved inside it like a slow fish. "My uncle said the dead lose the path first. Hold this. Don't drink it. Just hold it." Lily reached. Her fingers passed through the flask once, then caught. The glass was cold against her palm, colder than she had been when she died, and the cold pinned her in place. The trees stopped sliding. Ollie was three steps away again, not thirty. She could see the dirt under his shoes. She could see the girl's chapped knuckles around the flask's neck. "I'm Marrow," the girl said. "I'm looking for my dog. He went in and didn't come out." She studied Lily's face. "You're looking for something too." "My body," Lily said. "My brother asked me to meet him. I never got there." Marrow nodded once, the way people nod at bad news they already half knew. She did not let go of the flask. "Then we walk together to the next fork. After that I go north. You keep going with him." She tipped her chin at Ollie. "If you drift again, squeeze the glass. It'll bring you back. Once. Maybe twice. Don't waste it." Ollie watched the flask and said nothing. Lily understood: the cold in her hand was the only thing keeping her tied to the path, and it would not last. She stepped forward, and this time the trees stayed where they were. The clearing where she had died was still somewhere ahead. Now she had a tether, a stranger walking beside her, and a limit she could feel counting down against her palm.