The Girl in the Green Silk Gown

by Seanan McGuire

  Apple showed me a map of this farm. Cheating, I guess, but I don’t care. She told me we’d wake up in the pumpkin patch and that we’d be taken to the barn from there, and that the Barrowmans change the place as much as they can every year—but there’s only so much you can change when geography and climate combine to limit your options. The orchards were always in the same place; the marsh was sometimes frozen and sometimes not, but it would always be on the other side of the irrigation ditch. Those were the things that could help me stay alive.

  “Once you’re in the corn, you need to run for the corn maze,” Apple had said, tracing my route with her fingertip. “Don’t head for the interior—that’s a labyrinth, and they’ve never repeated a design, so I can’t show you the way through—but if you go around back, there’s a channel the family uses for maintenance. It’s their short cut. From there, it’s a straight shot to the apple orchard and the old barn. If you get there, you can find a hiding place and hunker down for the rest of the night. You could hide there for a hundred years.”

  I don’t need that kind of time. I just need a single Halloween. Signaling Salem and Jimmy to stay quiet, I point right, and break back into a run.

  * * *

  Gunshots in the distance mark the progress of the hunters. They aren’t constant—not yet. This early in the game, only the truly desperate will be seriously working to make their kills. Everyone else will be enjoying the day, looking for their prey amongst the panicked throng of the dead. And there are always a few who won’t hunt the unarmed, men and women who wait for the dead to arm themselves before closing in. Never mind that they have guns and the best the dead are going to find will be old farm tools and rusty knives. It’s the principle that matters to them, not the actual potential for one of the dead to defeat them. They want to be hunters, not killers.

  Fuck them and their fragile justifications. If it were up to me, we wouldn’t do this, and if that wasn’t an option, no one would go armed at all. You’d have to beat your victims to death with your fists, feel their blood on your fingers, feel their teeth breaking your skin, and truly understand that your life was coming at the expense of someone’s eternity. So it’s probably a good thing for everyone that I’m not the one in charge. I don’t know who is—Odin, probably, or some other god of death and war—and I hope I never have the opportunity to ask them why they would do this to us.

  We run through the corn in silence, Jimmy hanging back to pace me, Salem pushing herself harder than she ever did in life. As long as those gunshots stay distant, I’m not worried. I can’t imagine that anyone ever comes out this far, this fast. The mouth of the rear channel is almost a surprise, looming out of the gray-and-green stalks like a mirage. Grabbing Salem by the elbow, I turn, and keep on running. She yelps, managing not to stumble as I haul her along.

  “So where are we going?” asks Jimmy, pulling up alongside me again. He’s not even breathing hard. Asshole.

  “Out of the corn,” I snap, using as little air as possible. God, I wish all this exercise would count for something. With as much time as I’ve spent incarnate and running for my life in the last year and a half, you’d think I’d be able to work my way into slightly better shape. “Apple orchard. Old barn.” And the marsh behind it, but I don’t want to tell him that, not yet. There’s too much of a chance he’ll be a liability, and I’ll need a route he doesn’t know about.

  Salem’s already a liability, too slow, too visible against the corn, little Snow White tattoo girl, like a naughty fairy tale running from the hand that holds the apple. But at least she’s trying. Jimmy looks like this is all a joke, and I don’t have a clue how I can get it through his head that this is anything but funny.

  We run until the corn gives way, our feet pounding against the hard-baked earth. The apple orchard looms ahead of us, trees groaning under the weight of the fruit waiting for the harvest. “This way,” I snap, grabbing Salem by the hand and hauling her in my wake.

  “I thought we wanted to stay under cover,” says Jimmy, still too damn amused for anyone’s good. A little voice in the back of my head is shrieking danger danger danger, and it’s too late now, too late to do anything but run.

  “If you’ve got a better idea, you can just be my guest.” I’m too annoyed by his attitude to stop the words from getting out. Halloween is serious business, and here he is, treating it like it’s all just another game.

  “I think I will,” he says. Putting two fingers in his mouth, he whistles shrilly. There’s a click in the trees to the left, and then—almost before I hear the gunshot—Salem is wobbling, a comic look of surprise distorting her features. A bloody red rose blooms on her chest, Snow White felled in the presence of a hundred unpicked apples. Her hand pulls free of mine as she falls, crumpling to the ground.

  “What did you do?” I demand, dropping to my knees. It’s too late, I know that even before I see Salem’s open, glazed-over eyes; she’s gone. For the second time, she’s gone, and this time, she won’t wake up in the dubious safety of the twilight, won’t have any second chances. I stare at the red blood staining her borrowed clothes, realizing numbly that I don’t even know what she was. Hitcher, phantom rider, yuki-onna, wraith . . . the choices are endless, and Salem wasn’t.

  Salem ended.

  Salem ended, but I haven’t. That thought gets me back to my feet, poised to run, run away from this little boy who brought the hunters down on a stupid little fairy-tale princess. Let him face the rest of this long night alone. I’m done.

  Instead, I find myself looking at a man in hunter’s green, holding a shotgun pointed square at the middle of my chest. Jimmy is smiling like he’s just won himself the world.

  “See, Anton?” he says. “I told you I could break some of them away from the rest of the herd.”

  The man with the shotgun has Jimmy’s eyes. This can’t possibly be good.

  * * *

  I raise my hands, trying to look innocent and young. Everyone who comes here to hunt knows they’ll be shooting ghosts to ransom their own lives, but some of them still have trouble killing kids. “Please don’t shoot, mister,” I say. “I’ll do anything you want.”

  “I see we’ve got us a brave one,” says the man, and snorts. He walks to Salem, nudging her with his boot. “If they’re all this accommodating, I should’ve let you take the goth chick. Goth chicks will do some freaky stuff if they think it’ll get them somewhere.”

  Hate uncurls hot and liquid in my belly. “Her name was Salem,” I say, dropping the act as swiftly as I adopted it. It’s clear it won’t work here. “I don’t know how she died the first time. I never had the opportunity to ask.”

  “It was probably an overdose. It always is, with this kind,” says the man dismissively, and smiles at me. It’s the coldest smile I’ve ever seen on a man who wasn’t Bobby Cross. “You tell my baby brother all about the holidays?”

  “What makes you think I know what’s going on here? I’m as confused by all of this as he is.”

  “She’s lying,” says Jimmy, still easy, still treating all this like a game. “She explained the whole thing while we were running. All I have to do is kill her and I can be alive again.”

  I never said that. I said something similar, sure, but I never said that. I’m opening my mouth to tell him so when I realize what he’s planning, and shut it with a snap. The man—Anton—hands his gun to Jimmy, patting the smaller, deader boy on the shoulder as he does.

  “Sorry, Rose,” says Jimmy, and pulls the trigger.

  The gun speaks like thunder and I tense, waiting for the pain. It doesn’t come. Instead, Matthew Barrowman steps out of the corn, Violet a beat behind, both of them with scowls on their faces and guns in their hands. The air around me has turned thick and glittery, like it’s been painted with gel.

  “The dead do not kill the dead: that is not the game,” says Matthew. “Both of you, leave our land. You’re not welcome
here any longer.”

  “Now, Matthew—” begins Anton.

  The bolt sliding back on Matthew’s shotgun is impossibly loud. “You’ve got a year, Anton. You killed a dead girl, you get a year. Your brother only has a few hours. You’re both going to need to find a new fallow field if you want to try again next Halloween.”

  “That isn’t fair!” wails Jimmy.

  “Death never is,” says Violet. “Now go.”

  * * *

  The Barrowmans stand with me as Anton and Jimmy vanish into the corn. I wonder whether Anton will be able to get his brother off the grounds without some other opportunistic hunter taking a shot. I wonder whether I care.

  It’s not a difficult question to answer.

  “You have our apologies, child,” says Violet. “We genuinely hoped you’d go to ground and wake up none the wiser.”

  “What?” I turn to look at her, bemused.

  I never see what hits me.

  When I wake up, my head is aching. I’m hogtied on a bed of hay, and the Halloween jack-o-lantern is sitting a few feet away, the stub of a candle flickering in its heart. It’ll go out any second now.

  Any second now.

  Any—

  The candle gutters like a sigh and dies, leaving a wisp of wax-scented smoke curling through the air. I do my best to stretch, expecting my bonds to drop away, taking flesh and blood and this whole horrible experience with them.

  They don’t. In slowly dawning horror, I stare at the darkened jack-o-lantern, waiting for whatever ember is still burning there to finally give up and go out. It doesn’t happen. There is no fire to extinguish.

  The candle’s out, and I’m alive.

  Something is very, very wrong.

  Chapter 5

  Candles and Consequences

  SQUIRMING DOESN’T DO ANY GOOD. These knots were tied by someone who knew what they were doing, and I don’t have the leverage to break free. I squirm harder, and only succeed in giving myself a muscle cramp, which hurts. That realization is enough to make me freeze for several seconds, biting my lip as I struggle not to scream. It’s not a big pain—I can remember bigger ones, the time I broke my arm, the time my brother’s dog bit me hard enough I needed stitches—but they’re all in the past, far away and veiled in honey-colored nostalgia. This pain is real, this pain is now, and I don’t want it. I don’t want any of this.

  Breathing rapidly in and out through my nose, I focus on staying quiet until the pain passes. When it does, I go back to squirming, more carefully now, aware that my body—my body, why do I have a body—could betray me at any moment if I’m not careful. After what feels like forever, but can’t have been more than a few minutes, not with the candle still smoking, I manage to force myself into a seated position. I stop there, fighting for my breath. When did breathing get so difficult? Why am I breathing in the first place? Everything about this is wrong.

  A floorboard creaks. I freeze. The sensation of fear—hormonal, living fear—is also new to me, as new as pain, and for a moment, I feel like I’m going to choke to death on my own terror. The moment passes. The creak becomes a footstep.

  Violet Barrowman steps out of the dark.

  Her eyes widen when she sees me, but not with surprise. This looks more like satisfaction at a job well done, an impression that strengthens as she begins to smile. I glare sullenly back, refusing to ask any questions, refusing to do anything but wait her out. I may be prisoned in flesh for some inexplicable, impossible reason, but that doesn’t mean I’ve lost the habit of patience. Sixty years dead did a lot to teach me about waiting. Sometimes it’s the most powerful tool we can have.

  It works. Her smile fades. She begins to fidget. Finally, she snaps, “Oh, don’t look at me like that. You could be a little grateful. What we’ve done here should have been impossible, and yet there you are, pretty as a picture, alive. You’re alive again, Rose. All the way alive.”

  I don’t say anything. Let her think it’s because I’m being intransigent. Let her think I have the emotional maturity of the teenager I appear to be. Being sixteen forever has to be good for something.

  But if what she’s saying is true, you’re not sixteen forever, whispers a tempting, terrible voice at the back of my mind. You’re going to age, Rose Marshall. You’re going to grow up. Neverland is leaving you.

  I shudder, and Violet’s smile returns.

  “Cold?” she asks sweetly. “Or maybe you’re hungry, or thirsty, or you need to use the bathroom? Those are the gifts we’ve given to you. This took a lot of time to set up, little girl. You’d think you could be grateful.”

  “Grateful?” My voice is low, gravelly, filled with an anger so big it seems to fill the room. “Put me back. Put me back right fucking now.”

  For the first time, Violet actually looks surprised. “I . . . it doesn’t work that way, Rose. I can’t snap my fingers and make you dead again. You’re alive. This is a great gift. Do you know how many ghosts would kill for this opportunity?”

  “The opportunity to be tied up and incarnate in some freak’s barn? Oh, yeah, we’re all clamoring for this down in the twilight.” I jerk against my bonds. “Why did you do this to me?”

  The air tastes like dust. It sticks to my tongue, and the flavor fills my mouth. I don’t want it, but I can’t make it go away, and no matter how hard I try, I can’t catch any of the scents that mean safety or danger on the wind creeping through the cracks in the walls. The fear feels like it’s fossilizing in my veins, replaced drop by drop with a cold, sludgy dread.

  “The kindness of our hearts,” says Violet—but her eyes dart to the side as she speaks, not looking at me. She’s lying. Why is she lying?

  “Where’s your husband?”

  “He’s . . . picking our older daughter up from a friend’s house. Willow doesn’t enjoy the family Halloween the way the younger ones do.” She still isn’t looking at me. Why isn’t she looking at me? Why . . .

  Oh. “Better be careful,” I say, leaning back, feeling the rough prickle of the hay bales behind me as they pierce the thin fabric of my shirt. “Bobby says a lot of things. Says ‘I’ll give her back’ and ‘You can trust me.’ He lies. Bobby Cross always lies.”

  Violet gasps. Any pleasure I might have felt at eliciting that kind of response is outweighed, however, by the fact that she isn’t untying me, and I’m still not dead.

  “What did he tell you?” I demand. “That I’m his ‘one true love’ and he just wanted me back? I can’t imagine he told you I was a murderous bitch and needed to be punished, because the only thing you’ve said so far that strikes me as actually being true is that life is a gift. You think you’ve given me something I want, when all you’ve done is shackle me inside a bunch of rotting meat. Stop it. Break whatever ritual you have going, and let me go.”

  “I can’t,” Violet whispers.

  “Can’t, or won’t?”

  “Can’t,” she repeats, voice shaking. “It’s not a ritual that’s keeping you alive. You’re alive because we called you back.”

  “How the . . .”

  She relaxes a little. Apparently, explaining unspeakable necromancy is something she’s comfortable with. That’s swell. I know I feel better when I’m hanging with people who believe it’s okay to screw with the dead for shits and giggles.

  “Mr. Cross came to us a year ago,” she says. “He said . . . well, he said a lot of things, and most of them aren’t any of your business, but he said he had a business proposition for us. He wanted our help pulling a woman he cared for very deeply back into the lands of the living. He knew that our relationship with the Queen meant that any ghost he marked would be sent to us, and he wanted our aid. How could we refuse?”

  Translation: if that wasn’t when Bobby had taken the daughter, it was when he’d made it clear that he could, without any trouble or risk to himself. He’s always been a charmer
when he wants to be, and most people don’t see the viper lurking in those pretty whiskey-colored eyes. All he would have needed to do was get himself past the door.

  “Did you ever ask whether I cared about him? Or did you only care what he wanted?”

  Violet’s cheeks flush red. She raises her chin. “The first part of the ritual had to be performed before Halloween. If he hadn’t done it, nothing we did could have held you. Do you honestly expect me to believe he was able to pin you down when you didn’t want him to?”

  A chill runs along my skin, leaving it covered in goose bumps, tight and painful. The routewitch. The one who’d bled herself out at his command, damaging my protection and causing Apple to suggest Halloween with a family she trusted—a family that wasn’t made up of true routewitches, which meant they wouldn’t have come to her with their troubles. She’d sent me into a trap thinking she was saving me.

  “What did you do?” I whisper.

  “We called to Styx. We showed her you were worthy, that you had been cleansed, and you were already incarnate, thanks to the Samhain blessing. All she had to do was refuse to take your body back to the River when the candle died.” Violet smiles again. She’s less sure that what she’s done was right, if she ever truly believed it had been, but she’s trying, oh, how she’s trying. Denial is such a tempting drug. “We’ve done the impossible. It’s been centuries since the last true resurrection.”

  “There are reasons for that,” I spit. “Everything is balance. That’s how the afterlife functions. He talked a routewitch who was probably about your daughter’s age into slitting her own throat to ‘cleanse’ me. Did he tell you that part?”