Lily Whitmore's Arc

Chapter 8 of 17

Marrow brushed dirt from Lily's face in the pit. The pale cheek, the closed eyes, the mouth slack — all of it belonged to Lily and none of it pulled her in. Lily waited for the tug she had been promised, the quiet slide toward rest. It did not come. She stood at the lip of the hole and felt only the same cold she had died with. "I'm out," Lily said. "I'm looking at me. Why am I still here?" Ollie crouched beside the grave. "Something's holding you. Think." He did not look up. "Fast. Sky's turning." The girl in the red top held her candle low over the body. The man in the long coat pressed his boxy device to the dirt and shook his head. The blue-edged boy stepped back and made room. None of them spoke. Lily tried to remember why she had come to this clearing. A note. Her brother. A meeting. She had walked down here in the dark and someone had been waiting. Someone who knew her mother's garden. Someone who had buried her under leveled ground and gone home. A pale shape drifted from the tree line. The lost little ghost girl in the white dress stopped at the edge of the pit and set something down in the leaves. It was a small glass flask with gold bands, half full of yellow-green light. "You gave me one already," Lily said. The girl shook her head and pointed at Lily's chest, then at the body, then at the trees behind them. Two tall rabbit shapes stood among the trunks, watching, arms at their sides. They did not come closer. The girl mouthed one word. Wait. Lily understood then. She was not bound to the body. She was bound to the answer. Whoever dug this hole had a name, and until she said it, the ground would keep her. She knelt by her own face and made herself look. She saw a bruise along the jaw. She saw dirt under the fingernails. She saw, folded in the stiff hand, a corner of paper she had not noticed before. The handwriting on the corner was her brother's. Orin Wanderwood had written the note that brought her here, and Orin had been the one waiting in the dark. She said his name out loud. The clearing did not shake. Nothing lifted her. But the cold in her chest sharpened into something she could carry. "He did it," Lily said. Ollie looked up at her. Marrow stopped digging. "My brother. He met me here. He put me under." She stood. The sun touched the top of the cherry tree. "I know who. I still don't know where he took me after. This isn't the grave that keeps me. There's another one."