Lily Whitmore's Arc

Chapter 9 of 17

The sun climbed the cherry tree in slow inches. Lily stood over the shallow pit and the body that was not enough. She had a name for her killer now, but the ground under her feet was the wrong ground. Orin had dug her up once already and carried her somewhere else. She had maybe an hour before the light finished her. "Where else," Lily said. "He took me somewhere. Where." Marrow climbed out of the pit and wiped her hands on her pants. "I can read dirt. Not a whole forest." She looked at the tree line. "Give me something of his to hold. Or a place he'd pick." Lily had nothing of his. Then she remembered the corner of paper in her own dead hand. Ollie saw her look and knelt in the pit. He worked the folded note free of the stiff fingers without flinching. He passed it up to Marrow. "He wrote it," Ollie said. "He touched it last. Use that." Marrow pressed the paper flat against her palm and closed her eyes. The man in the long coat lifted his boxy device and turned a slow circle, listening for something none of them could hear. The girl in the red top held her candle steady. The blue-edged boy watched the trees. Marrow's mouth tightened. "North," she said. "Not far. There's a low place. Water in it sometimes. He walked there and back in one night." She opened her eyes. "I can't be more exact from here. I have to stand on it." They ran. Lily moved ahead of them through the trunks because she weighed nothing and the cold in her chest pulled her forward like a wire. She heard Marrow's boots and Ollie's quiet breathing and the man's device ticking. She did not look at the sky. She counted trees instead. At the eighth big pine the ground dipped. A shallow bowl of leaves and old rain. Marrow stopped at the edge and went down on both knees and pressed her hands flat. "Here," Marrow said. "He dug here. Deeper than the other one." She looked up at Lily. Her face was gray. "She's under my hands." Lily knelt beside her. The wire in her chest went slack for the first time since she had woken in the dark. She had found the place. She could see the first pink edge of the sun through the pines, and she did not have time to dig, and she did not care. She knew where she was. "Start," she said. "All of you. Start now." Marrow was already pulling the small flask from the satchel. Ollie was already on his knees in the leaves. The girl in the red top set her candle in the dirt so both her hands were free.