soil fought her with every swing of the shovel, every drive of her heel to force the spade deeper. Her arms began to burn, then her back. Her sweat ran cold in a crisp breeze, turning to needles of ice against her skin.
It felt like the first foot took two hours. The second foot took four. She leaned against the shovel to catch her breath, lungs on fire, standing in a shallow trench. She’d never get this done before sunrise. Morning would bring people, she’d get caught, and—
Seelie paused. She stared up at the bone-white moon.
It hadn’t moved. She’d been digging for hours, and it was exactly where it had been when she began, straight above her, stark and glowing in a starless night sky.
The Labor, she thought. It’s real. I’m inside it. I’m in the snare.
Too late to back out, which meant she had two choices left: win or die.
62.
The wind carried whispers.
The wind was a balm, at first. Every ripple of air cooled the sweat caking Seelie’s skin, plastering her T-shirt to her back as she brought the shovel down. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been digging. There wasn’t anything but the aching, the thud of steel on dirt, the monotony of the work. Then the whispers came, sibilant, swirling at the farthest edges of her hearing.
who are you who ARE you who are YOU?
The shovel came down. She shoved, hefted, sent a shower of soil and stone flying.
“Seelie Rose,” she said. She couldn’t stop digging. She knew a distraction when she saw one; Subject Eight had complained about whispers before she died.
Before she killed herself, Seelie thought. Before she screamed that she’d been digging for a month.
She’s in Tartarus now, she thought, digging for all eternity. And screaming, with half a face. I’ll be right next to her, with everyone else who tried and failed.
She almost dropped the shovel. No. She hadn’t thought that. The words on the wind had spoken in her voice, whispering silky poison into her inner ear.
“Stay out of my head,” she growled.
The shovel came down.
The whispers became a giggle, high-pitched, gleeful at their own trick.
What’s your real name? they asked her.
“Told you,” she grunted, leaning into the shovel.
That’s not your real name.
She didn’t say a word. She kept digging. The whispers swirled around her, the wind becoming a miasma of faint, steamy mist. It took on the odors of the graveyard, damp, like wet and dirty socks.
That’s not your real name, the whispers repeated.
She still didn’t answer. She saw the mists quiver in the corner of her eye. Agitated now.
Answer us.
“No,” Seelie replied.
The miasma thickened. The mist brushed her throat with gossamer fingers, the hands of a ghostly strangler, aching to squeeze.
Why not?
“Because my name is mine. It belongs to me, not you. I am not a subject for debate. I am a human being, and I don’t owe you an argument, especially when your only purpose”—she brought the shovel down, stomping her heel against the spade to wriggle it deeper into the earth—“is to stand in my way.”
The voices went silent for a while. She felt them shifting like the graveyard wind, reassessing, changing tack. She leaned into her work. The pile of dirt beside the plot was growing, but slowly, slower than it had any right to. How long had she been digging?
Why are you throwing your life away? the whispers asked.
“I’m not, if I win,” she said. “I didn’t come all this way to lose.”
A storm of voices battered down on her, furious, swarming around her head like a cloud of biting gnats. arrogance ARROGANCE arrogant child, Aislin Kendricks was the greatest dream witch of her century. Who are you, to think you can be the key to any lock she crafted? You know nothing. You are nothing.
“I still have to try.”
You don’t have to. Lay your shovel down and go home. You can still go home.
“I don’t have a home,” she said.
The cloudy miasma took on a new form. The distant, shimmering silhouette of a mansion, white limestone rising at the crest of a snaking driveway. Her father’s house in Buffalo. Just another place to die.
Go home. You can survive if you go home. The voices rallied, multiplying. They took on the mocking cadence of Jimmy Sloane’s shadow puppets. Noone else wants you. You don’t belong anywhere. There is no other place for you, not in this world or any other. NO ONE WANTS YOU. You’re going to die alone.