Lil Lady Laralet

Lil Lady Laralet ain’t never killed no king before. What was a king, and what was a ‘kill’?

           Laralet was a tiny lil thing with spidernest hair and bloatfish egg eyes. She didn’t know nothing beyond the Gloom Swamp, where reedwater crisscrossed all round the mushgreengrey islands.

           Even so, Quail, as white as fog and taller than the boatties, with mothwings, spiderfangclaws, a honeywarm smile, and a gentlebreeze hold, still expected Laralet to kill a king and become her heir someday. The others called Quail ‘Death’, but Laralet liked Quail better. Quail’d taught her everything she knew: how to walk without being seen, how to speak without being heard.

           She’d even given Laralet a horrorbow made of shadows and ghosts for her seventh birthday. Said it could kill a king. Laralet’d spent every day since hauling it round the swamp. If she dug the skull-carved end into the mud, kicked a leg onto the limb, and pulled til her fingers turned speckled-red and throbbahummed, she could get the string to budge a lil.

            And every day, when dusk fell and tucked the day into bed, Laralet plucked reeds, wrapped em round her fingers squeezetight to dull the throbbahumming, and hauled the horrorbow back to Quail’s treehouse. The treehouse twisted round that biglong thing Quail called a clocktower and shot off to another dozen platforms and shacks. Quail’s bedroom was up over there, the library twirled up the side of the clocktower, and the lookout dangled over the cricketing dam.

            Laralet lived in her special sleephole tucked tween the mangrove roots and behind a lil grubby door. She slinked into the hole, slid off her mud boots, and switched her sweaty clothes for a neat skirt. The room spanned two steps from the left to the right wall and three to the far one. She plonked on the bed and balanced the horrorbow cross her lap.

            With a washrag she got ascrubbing, starting with the mud along the ends, then the fingertips along the base, and finished with the scuttlespider string. Then it was into the pocketbag with it, which she kept round her shoulder. Small as a pocket, as light as one, too, she kept everything Quail gave her in there: the whistlewind, the doorknife, the horrorbow. Even Jasper.

            Then it was on with her boots and outside to play again. She captured dragonflies and fed em to fatlizards; got caught by a stranglesnake and chomped by a gator; and played the whistlewind while the blarefrogs matched her with their trombone croaks. She played it by the small cliff that overlooked the river, where the reeds fuzzed and lilypads smothered.

            Boatties sailed the river to and from Quail’s house, where they dropped off the glowfly-in-lantern they’d been ferrying and left again. While they ferried the glowflies, Quail hunted the runners somewhere out there.

            “Hullo,” she said to em as they passed.

            “’Lo, Laralet,” one said. He had two glowflies in his lantern. Two! The boattie musta noticed her shock. “Just like you.”

            “It’s cute.” The boattie let her hold it. One glowfly was fatter than the other. It bobbed like a fatfrog as it moved about. The other was smaller, like a blit, zipping and zapping this way and that.

            The boatties took all the glowflies down the well neath the treehouse, xcept for those extra glowflies, which Quail made into more boatties or gardeners “as way of apology”. But Quail’d gone and kept Laralet as Laralet and Laralet hadn’t the damnedest why.

            The grimbarge horn blared from round the riverbend. Laralet jumped to her feet.

            “Quail’s here! Quail’s here! Yippee!” She bounced bout like a jackrabbit. The boatties never showed their expressions, but she guessed there musta been something glad neath those white masks. The grimbarge pushed out from the trees, steam gushing out its bone-white shell. Laralet stood tippytoes, tryna grab a peak through the window for Quail.

            The boat grooooaned to a stop, just inches from Lil Lady Laralet. Out came the servants, The Crone, The Watcher, and then, at last …

No one.

            No Quail.

            She weren’t really sure what happened next. A ringing started up in her ears.

Voices and murmurs crackled round like a humstatic, and she weren’t really sure what they were saying but she knew it were bad, and her skin felt all clammycold like someone’d shoved her down into the lakebed, and still she didn’t know why.

            The Crone musta been the one speaking, with her crow beak and hollow eyes, muffling about important things Laralet didn’t understand, and there The Watcher was, no expression, no nothing.

None of em had any expression!

None of em ever did, but it only seemed to sting now.

She looked round to the boatties and the others and the servants and in the pit of the stomach she knew that something real bad musta happened to Quail.

            Everything started spinning up and round and in and out. She clamped her mouth and sprinted to the treehouse for the hourglass Quail called Eternity and all at once her whole head wanted to explode.

            One of em’d made the call and the hourglass’d gone and spun, so wherever Quail was, and whatever’d happened, she didn’t have much time left. Just til midnight for someone to replace her. She didn’t want no Crone or Watcher instead of Quail!

            She yanked out Jasper the fatfrog from her pocketbag and squeezed a croak outta him. Instead of a croak, a purple fish swished out and pointed back t’wards the way the grimbarge’d come from. Quail’d said Jasper’d make sure she never got lost, but Laralet sure felt lost now.

            Then she was off – but she couldn’t see too well – because it musta rained or something, but everything round her eyes was all wobbly, and she couldn’t really hear anything anyone was saying, and she didn’t really care, because the whole stinking lot of em musta never really cared bout Quail, but she did! She always did, so she ran til her chest got all tightened up.

            She reached the Spanning Delta, where the river forked like a hundred lightning bolts. She’d never gone beyond this point – Quail’d forbidden it. The sky, already foggrey, twisted to shadowblack, then horrorblack, and then to nothing.

            Even now, boatties kept sailing up and back with their lanterns.

            Laralet squeezed Jasper. The fish lanced down one of the rivers where a sign read Perenot.

            “Oi, boattie.” She waved for a boattie that’d come from Perenot, who ignored her. “Oi, I’m talking to you.” Ignored again. She stamped her foot and seethed out steam. “Oi, you.” She called to another from Perenot. Ignored again.

Enough! She pounced onto the boat, right next to the glowfly-in-lantern. The boattie twisted round all stormy, hoisted up the lantern, and raised it above her.

            “No stowaways!” The boattie yelled and crashed the lantern onto Laralet’s forehead. Specklestars lit up and dazzled everything round her. Another hit and her head spun all the way round the world and back. The boattie readied another swing but Laralet twistrolled outta the way.

            She pounced, wrapped her arms round the boattie’s legs, and pushed him flat onto his back, where he hung halfway off. She yanked free her horrorbow from the pocketbag and cracked his head with it. Take that, dumb boattie!

            “Get me to Perenot,” She lifted the bow again. Through the dark of the boattie’s hood, something changed. Something like a recognition, or a thought, or a realisation.

            “A horrorbow. My apologies.” The boattie relaxed.

            She didn’t know the big deal. It was just a lump of shadows. “That’s right. A horrowbow. Now get me to Perenot.”

            “At once.”

            “Yay.” She threw up her arms in victory. Felt good to beat up the boattie.

            “If you please. I need to stand.” The boattie shifted bout under her and pressed the lantern into her hands.

            “Oh, right.” Laralet stepped off and sat at the back with the glowfly-in-lantern. The boattie raised himself tall, jabbed his oar to the water, and swivelled the whole thing round back down to the Spanning Delta.

            The boat bobbed along. Laralet passed time by playing with Jasper and searching the water for something slimy. She played a few tunes on the whistlewind for the glowfly, but it didn’t look so happy.

            The shadowblacks and horrorblacks round her lightened as they sailed. The river straightened and the reeds went down. The bank faded, then brightened, so that only the outlines showed. The sky smeared white, and underneath, the water faded, too. She reached out and found air, but it wasn’t even air, because there was no wind, no nothing.

            She sat there, alone with her thoughts, and half an hour later, the boat lost its colour, and the boattie, and the lantern, and then the outlines faded, and it was just her and the glowfly.

            Light streeeetched out from beyond, from one horizon to the other, and then all went black.

            And it didn’t get bright again. Not til she realised her eyes were shut.

She blinked and found herself in a small room. Four bonehard stone walls, a floor, a roof, and a metal door. Nothing xcept a skinchafe mattress in the corner where someone like her slept.

            And the sight of that someone horrorscared her, cos she’d never seen another person like her before, with two arms and two legs and skin and hair and two eyes, but if she were a ‘she’, then he musta been a ‘he’, cos he weren’t all like her. He had something down there that she didn’t, and he was a lot thinner than she was, and his skin was palewhite and scrapedry. He reminded her of the glowfly.

            She touched him, but that didn’t do nothing, so she wrung him round his neck like how she’d play with her frogs. Eyes snapped open and hands snatched her own and ripped em off, and then he went sputtering and gasping everywhere, saying some words she’d never heard and some she had.

            He looked this way and that, round to the four walls, and then to Laralet, where he screamed, held himself stickstill, and spoke again.

            “Who are you?” He managed through a hum of coughs.

            “Laralet. Who’re you?”

            “Polip.” He coughed again. “Why are you here? Why am I here? I shouldn’t be here.”

            “Huh?”

            “I should be dead! Feels like I was almost there. I glimpsed it. The world beyond. I felt at peace, but now I’m back. Why am I alive? I don’t want to be alive.”

            “Huh?” Laralet tilted her head. Polip musta been speaking some other language. It all didn’t make a lick of sense. She looked round again, tryna make some sense of it all. She’d deal with the boy later. She took her doorknife, slid it cross the lock to open it, and explored the hallway outside. All just the same few cells and doors.

She returned to Polip, who didn’t wanna get closer than a few steps to her.

            “What are you?” he said.

            “Laralet.”

            “What are you? How’d you open that door?”

            “The doorknife.” She showed her the knife. He didn’t seem to like the answer too much. He looked not stormy, but intense, like the tension in Quail’s horrowbow. “Where am I?”

            “Lerue’s Palace. Perenot.”

            “Lerue? Polip and Lerue. Funny names.”

            “You’re the one with the funny name. Calling yourself Laralet in here of all places.”

“Well I ain’t from here. I’m from Quail’s swamp.”

            “Quail! Death!” Polip grabbed her top and yanked it close. “Please. You gotta help me. You gotta kill me. I’m supposed to be dead.”

            Kill? Quail’d told her that she gotta kill a king one day. If she could kill someone, then they musta been a king. But what was a kill? “Are you a king?”

            “If I was a king, I’d have done a whole lot more good than Lerue had ever done. Please. Kill me. I should be dead. I shouldn’t be here.”

“What’s a kill?”

To answer, he grabbed her hand with the doorknife and forced the tip into his chest. Nothing happened. “Anything that makes us die.”

            “What is it to die? What’s death?” she asked.

            Polip looked like she’d just spoken a load of nonsense. He took her to the window. Everything outside all seemed to sprawl together like one biglongbigwide maze. Biglonger and bigwider than Laralet coulda ever imagined. Marble and stone houses fit together like a puzzle, crisscrossed by paths and roads, on and on til they reached hills, and beyond the hills, the mountains. Boggled her head like someone’d gone and stuck it in the mud.

            “Quail brings death,” Polip said. “When we hurt too much, or we get too old, or sick, or the king starves us and kills us, we go and die.”

            “And then what?”

            “We stop living here. We move on and go somewhere else.”

            “Where?”

            “The stories say it’s a swamp. And we don’t see our friends or families ever again, but it’s alright. I heard it’s very peaceful.”

            “Then what’s the point?”

            “It’s the way things work.”

            “But when I get hurt real bad, I don’t die.”

            “Because you’ve already gone and died. If you’re from Quail’s swamp, then you’re already dead, and if you’re dead, you can’t die again.” Polip looked to her. “And I guess I can’t die too, or else your knife would’ve killed me. You’ve got to help me pass on.”

            The thought of death made Laralet choke up and she didn’t know why. She wanted to plonk herself in the corner and cry herself silly, but she kept herself steady. The world outside looked so pretty and nice, why would Polip never wanna see that again?

            “I ain’t doing it.” Laralet spun round and yanked out Jasper. The croak pointed downward. Quail was here! “I’m going.”

            “Wait,” Polip said. “Please help me.”

            “I ain’t doing that.” Quail was crazy! “I ain’t here for you anyways.”

            “Where are you going?”

            “Need to save Quail.”

            Something in the boy musta clicked. “Be careful out there, then. Don’t let the guards see you.”

            “If they’re anything like the gators, then they ain’t no big deal.”

            “I heard some of the guards talking. Lerue tricked and captured Quail. If they capture you, too, they’ll make sure that you’ll never escape again.”

            Laralet thought bout it and nodded. “Thanks, Polip.”

            She tucked the warning to the back of her mind and skipped out and into the hallway. She used the doorknife to poke round inside the other cells. The kids inside were clammycold and stickstill. Like they’d had enough and gone and … well … died. She found some alive down the other end of the hall, but they looked horrorscared, and she didn’t dare show herself, cos she was sure that they’d raise a big old fuss like Polip’d gone and done.

            So she went down one of the stairs that went round and round and ducked behind a statue when some burly voices and rattleclacks bounced up from below. Guards. Quail’d told her all about em, and they looked a lil like Laralet with their arms and legs, and that sent rattles down her spine. They had a metal-like shell, kinda like a crab, but no clack-clacks. Did people go and grow that shell when they grew up too much?

            “She hasn’t said another word yet,” one of em said with a voice like a mountain rumble.

            “’Course she won’t,” the other said. “She said her piece already.”

            “Lerue’s too foolish to listen to her, though.”

            The other guard twisted round, alarmed, and hissed like a stranglesnake. “Don’t let him hear you.”

            “Relax. He’s not around.”

            She waited til they left to move. The more she walked, the bigger the place seemed to be. It musta been bigger than the Gloom Swamp.

            But there weren’t much below. All the halls and all the doors looked the same, and they all went on and on, and the rattleclack of guards echoed anywhere she went. Jasper’s purple fish pointed to a guarded door, through the slits of which she could spot the shadowblack drapes of Quail’s hair.

            Laralet let the shadows eat her. She crept along the wall, slooowly, slooowly, and brushed behind the guards, just an inch from touching em. She slid the doorknife through the lock, darted in, scrambled up to the chandelier, and hid on the bed of lights

            But the moment the door’d groaned the guards raised a fuss. They shouted and grunted and rattleclacked all round. A few tested the door, cursed that the lock’d gone and broke, and took it out on Quail. They slapped her silly, begged her to talk to em, but Quail kept stonesilent.

            Laralet clamped her mouth shut. It had a habit of squeaking. The room was one of em hexagonical ones. The one with the six sides. One door, five bonewhite walls. A bonewhite rock clamped Quail’s wrists behind her waist and a dozen chains bolted her to the ground.

            Even captured, Quail amazed Laralet. A butterflywhite dress folded out from a horrorblack sheet. She looked very beautiful, as if night were three-metres tall and as graceful and lithe as a praying mantis. Even trapped and beaten, her moon-and-star eyes brimmed with gentleness and care.

            Eventually the guards grew bored of Quail and let her be. They returned to their spots, but the door musta spooked em real good, cos they kept two in the room to watch Quail. But Laralet didn’t mind.

            She made an O with her fingers, breathed some words through, and it flapped down in the shape of a butterfly, right onto Quail’s ears. Quail snapped from calm to worried. Quail whispered. Another butterfly flew up from Quail’s lips and perched on Laralet’s ear.

            “You should go.”

            “But I wanna stay here.”

            “You can’t free me. You’re not ready.”

            “I can and I will. I wanna save you.”

            “You’re not ready, Laralet. I’ve seen you with the horrorbow.”

            Laralet gulped. “You have?”

            “I see all within my swamp. The horrorbow pulls only for those who have accepted Death’s duty. You were to be my heir, but I dare not deny you your youth. This is no place for you, Laralet, and you are powerless here.”

            “I wanna save you. I love you.”

            “You are too young. Play with your frogs and lizards and leave me to my prison. I will not have you suffer for my blunder. The least I can do for you, Laralet, is grant you a childhood. Mastering that horrowbow will sacrifice that childhood,” Quail said. “Do not be afraid, Laralet. My successor will take care of you.”

            “They won’t.”

            “They will.”

            “They won’t! They all hate me.” Oh. Laralet forgot to whisper it – she’d gone and shouted it! Guards looked up and all a sudden her heart was athumping and abumping like crazy. They pointed and shouted. They musta seen her through the gaps!

            Cutsharp swords slid from sheaths and tensepoint bows trained on her. The rest of the guards crammed into the room, and there musta been a dozen eyes all on her. A bigfat demongross man burst into the room, louder than the deathbarge. Purpleblack skin dropped from him like honey and his eyes sagged like they woulda fallen out. He had a three-pronged spear in one hand and a ruby-crested mirror in another.

            “It’s King Lerue.” Another butterfly perched on her ear. “A runner.”

            “What’s a king?”

            “A ruler of man. Either the greatest or most wretched men you will ever know. There is no middle ground,” Quail said. “Listen. It will be difficult for you to get out of here, but you’re slippery. Those sword and bows will hurt, and they’ll hurt bad. Worser than anything you can imagine. Hurt too much, and you’ll lose your grip on where and what you are. The real danger is that mirror. Don’t look at its reflection. If you do, you’re as good as done.”

            “Gotcha.” Laralet blew back another butterfly, not daring to move from the chandelier. The guards below readied their tensepoint bows.

            The first bow twanged and the arrow swooshed right by her ear. The next nicked her finger. It hurt hammerpunch hard. More followed. Pow pow pow. One slammed her shoulder, and everything all went topsy-turvy. She wanted to throw up, but the thought of Quail kept her legs arooted and her mind athinking

            And athinking …

            But there was no way out.

            So she gambled and pounced at Lerue.

He mighta raised the mirror or something, but she didn’t know cos she had her eyes shut. The moment she landed, she twistrolled right outta the door, even though her arms didn’t wanna and her legs kept throbbahumming from the landing.

She kept her eyes shut til she’d ran so far that she banged her head into the wall at the end of the hall. She shrugged off the specklestars and the spinning and found a buncha guards right behind her.

            Whenever Laralet got arunning, she really got arunning. She ran off, down on all fours. Things whistled all round her, clickclacking at the stone. She ran faster than the big chunks o’metal could – she’d had a damn lotta practice in the swamp.

She reached the stairwell and bolted up, higher than the prisons, higher than whatever came next, and found the castle roofs.

            And from the first moment she stood there, she knew that she loved the sky. The sun wrapped her snug and warm and stole the throbbahumming from her. Everything round her slowed. She wanted to hug the sun.

The shouts from below yanked her out from the calm. She looked round. Just clouds. She couldn’t hide behind those.

            She ran to the edge. Lil people went all up and down the streets below. Rattleclacks clacked up the stairs. She froze.

Her heart bobbed in her throat and her teeth bit her lips and her eyes hazed. Her heart and teeth and eyes musta been horrorscared, cos if she fell, then she woulda gone splat, and she didn’t wanna know what splat felt like, but her fingers and toes had other plans. As the guards filed onto the roof, her fingers and toes found the gaps in the stones, and she worked her way down and down and down.

“There she is!” Tensepoint bows trained on her. Pow pow! She swung into the closest window just in time and landed on a carpet.

            The room throbbed shadowblack. Everything in the room was shadowblack: The four-poster bed, the furniture, the couple in the portraits (one of which sorta looked like Lerue but without all that rolling, purpleblack fat), and the unlit candles. Even the books, from reds and greens and blues, were all somehow shadowblack, too, and the light from outside didn’t reach into the room.

            There was another person with Lerue in that portrait. Gentle as Quail, but fleshier and pinker, with a stonesmooth chin. A woman. She looked pretty enough, and her eyes coulda lit up the whole world.

            She didn’t belong here. She oughta leave, but Laralet always poked her nose where it didn’t belong.

            Laralet poked round a lil more. Then a lot more. Her grubby hands found a lotta books with pictures to look at cos she didn’t know the words too well. She investigated the furniture, and whatever was under the furniture, and found a letter full of words she didn’t know.

But she knew one. Her name. It was right there in the middle.

            Her mind ran round and round as she put the letter down. The guards’ll be here soon. She rearranged the chairs and tables, yanked out the horrowbow, and wedged it tween the door and the furniture, faced it to the entrance, and waited.

            The word kept on adrumming. Laralet. Laralet. Why was her name there? While she listened for rattleclacks, she had another jab at the letter and tried to sound it out like Quail made her do.

            WE DECIDED TO NAME HER LARALET. She knew some of em words. Decided? Too long! Name? Nah-meh? Didn’t make no sense.

            She looked at the letter more. All sorta long words sprang up at her. She couldn’t pronounce em, so she gave up and stashed the letter into her pocket.

            Rattleclacks.

She grabbed the bowstring, kicked her legs into the limb, and pulled. Didn’t budge.

More rattleclacks. Louder and louder and louder.

She pulled and pulled til her fingers started throbbahumming, then loosened the string, waggled her fingers, puuuuuuulled, moved the string an inch, and held it.

            Rattleclacks. More and more. Rattle rattle, clack clack.

The door burst open.

Lerue filled the space, sweat trawling down his ugly face. Laralet coulda hit him then and there, but she musta not pulled the string back far enough, cos nothing happened. Nothing ever happened. Quail could pull the arrow back as easy as if it were yarn, and when she released it, a horrorblack arrow sprang outta the air. But Laralet ain’t ever made no horrorblack arrow.

Whatever Lerue’d expected, it never came. He flinched like he’d seen a shriekbat right above him, but when the arrow never came, he laughed and reached for the mirror.

            Laralet yanked free the horrorbow and stuffed it in the pocketbag.

            “Get out. Get out.” Lerue rumbled like a volcano. He stepped into the room and Laralet slinked back against the window. He pulled out the mirror; she shut her eyes. “I refuse. Won’t let Quail. Need to live. Need to live. Must protect Perenot. Must protect. Begone, Death. Open your eyes!”

            Listen. Listen. Something slid outta something. The spear. The cape crinkled and Lerue’s boots rattleclacked.

Wind stirred. She twistrolled to the side and scurried round. The thrust of the spear musta just missed her! She twirled out from the room and, eyes open, and pitterpattered all the way down the hall, not daring to look back.

            Lerue roared and a bell rang. Rattleclacks drummed from distant halls. She ran and ran and hid and ran up steps and down steps and only stopped when she found Polip hiding behind a statue.

But when she looked to Polip, Polip looked like he expected something, and those eyes stretched on long and long, empty and full of questions. Questions? But she was the one with the questions!

            “Can you kill me yet?” he asked.

            “Kill? Kill you?” The question knocked her square on her head; she felt silly and dizzy at the mention of it. “I can’t even kill Lerue. I can’t …” Then the tears came. Her knees wobbled and she dropped to the ground and sobbed into her arms. “I can’t kill Lerue and I’ll lose Quail cos of it.”

            “Why can’t you kill me?”

            “Cos I can’t pull this bow! She said I was too young for it. I ain’t even know what Death’s duty is. I don’t know what to do. I gotta save her. I dunno what I gotta do but I gotta do it.”

            “You saw the kids in the other cells, didn’t you?”

            “I did, but …”

            “They’re either dead or about to die. Lerue steals their life and keeps it for himself. Lerue is wicked. Death is not. They say he did the same to his Laralet, too.”

            “Huh?” The memory clicked. She shoved a hand up her pocketbag and stuffed the letter into Polip’s hand. “Saw my name on this, but I dunno what it says.”

            “I can’t read.” Polip returned the letter. “Few years ago, when I was just two, Queen Lapis was going to have a baby. She said she wanted to name it Laralet. We were all very excited. The whole kingdom was celebrating, then it all stopped.”

            “Why?”

            “Queen Lapis died and the little Laralet inside died, too.”

            “Inside?” Didn’t make no sense.

            “Do you know how when your mother has a baby inside her, she gets big?” Polip placed his arms around his belly and pushed out, as if there was something there. Laralet tilted her head crickety-crooked.

            “I’ve seen the scuttlespiders get big.” Laralet made a fist with her hand. “And out pops the eggs, and the babies are inside.”

            “Like that. And when they get big, sometimes the baby inside dies, or they both die.”

            “I see.” The boatties had those glowflies. She musta met Polip along the way as a glowfly. Maybe the lanterns with two of em inside were when someone died with their baby. “When did that happen?”

            “Seven years ago.”

            “I’m seven.” Quail’d taken her from one of em lanterns. But there was probably a buncha people named Laralet, and even if there weren’t, she couldn’t remember any of it. “Why’re you here then, Polip?”

            “Lerue uses us to live longer and longer.”

            “That’s horrible,” Laralet said, though she didn’t really know why.

            “But I’m already dead, so I don’t mind anymore.”

            “What about the others?”

            “They’re scared. It’s all natural, Laralet. People live. People die.”

            “But if they don’t wanna, then why should they?”

“Because that’s how life goes. Because Death reaches us all whether we want it to or not. Lerue can run, but Death will catch up to him before long.”

            “No. No no no. I refuse.” Laralet jumped to her feet. “When I replace Quail I ain’t gonna kill no one. I don’t wanna do it.”

            “You have to,” Polip said. “I want to die. I don’t belong here.”

            “But they don’t wanna, and he don’t wanna.” She waved her finger round above her head, guessing where Lerue could be. “I don’t think the guards wanna, either.”

            “It’s not about wants,” Polip hissed all snakelike. “It’s about how life should always be. It’s about duty.”

            “Duty?” Laralet toes itched to sprint. “I don’t want no duty. I wanna save Quail but I don’t wanna kill.” Why did Quail choose her of all people? Why did she want her to kill people. She didn’t wanna kill!

She ran. Out from the statue and down the spiral steps.

She needed someone to talk to.

            Not Polip or Tulip or Quail.

            But someone.

            She musta seen no one for the tears in her eyes, but she rammed headfirst into a guard. He swung out, grabbed her by the scruff of her neck, lifted her against the wall, and readied to stab with his cutsharp sword.

            “Please please please,” Laralet stammered out.

            “Caught ya. You’re that rat Lerue’s been screaming about, aren’t you.” The guard dug a stormy look into her.

            “Please lemme go lemme go.”

            The fury neath the visor tightened, then loosened, and his whole look froze. He let go and she plopped onto her bottom.

            “Who are you?” he asked. His voice quivered and his sword slipped from his hold.

            “I’m Lil Lady Laralet.”

            The guard dropped to a squat and azurebright eyes pricked out from the shadows of his visor. “Laralet. Well I’ll be damned.” Lil crystal beads dotted his eyes. “I shouldn’t help you. Lerue’ll find out. But your eyes, Laralet. They’re just like hers.”

            “Who?”

            “Brienna Lapis. I thought you had died. We all did.”

            The word panged hard. A realisation hit her somewhere round her chest.

“I think I died,” Laralet said. “I think I musta been inside her for a long long time. But I’m not from here. I’m from the Gloom Swamp.” She pulled Jasper outta her pocketbag. “And this is one of my friends. She helps lead me to Quail.”

            The guard’s gaze intensified. Tensepoint tense. “I was never one to believe in superstitions until Lerue captured Quail. You need to save her, don’t you?”

            “That’s right. But …”

            “But?”

            “I dunno if I should. I dunno if I can. Quail killed a lotta people. I don’t wanna do that. Death seems so so lonely. I don’t wanna kill.”

            “Death doesn’t kill,” the guard said. “She simply guides people to where they belong.”

            “Death is scary.”

            The guard shrugged. “It’s just the way the world works.”

            “But it don’t have to.”

            “It does.”

            Laralet sighed. She didn’t like this castle. “This means Lerue’s my dad, don’t it?”

            “Lerue was a good man once,” the guard said. “But not anymore. Something in him changed. The people fear him. Laralet, listen.”

            “I’m listening.”

            “When I was young, my mother told me so many tales about Quail. How she comes for us all; how she hunts the runners who try to escape death. It is a certainty. It is something that must happen. But Quail is never evil. The runners are the evil ones. They kill and torture and lie to hold onto life.”

            “But—”

            “Life is a gift, Laralet. And it is a poison, too. It is something to be enjoyed, but like a cake, eat too much, and you’ll grow sick, and if you keep eating it, you’ll take from other people, too.”

            “Polip said it was my duty. I don’t want no duty. I wanna play with the fatfrogs and the bloatfish.”

            At this, the guard seemed real sad. “I wanted to be a child forever, too. But I’m not a child anymore. We all have a duty, and we have this duty because it’s something no one else can do.”

            Rattleclacks. Laralet straightened stickstraight.

They drummed down the stairs, and before Laralet knew it, the guard had his sword raised, back facing her, and eyes up at where the rattleclacking came from.

            “Run,” he said.

            Lerue rounded the corner, followed by three guards. Lerue looked from Laralet to the guard and barked an order.

            It happened so quick. Three swords flashed out, wedged into the guard’s shell, and sprayed blood all cross the floor.

The world twisted.

Her skin and arms tingled and everything started to ring. She didn’t know where to look. She looked to the guard, who musta hated her in that moment for getting him killed, and she looked to the other guards, who surrounded and trapped her against the wall, and then to the demongross Lerue

            She pulled out the horrorbow. It was a lil’ lighter than normal. The string streeetched back, and she kicked up her leg to hold it steady, but she couldn’t pull it back far enough, and her fingers throbbahummed bad.

            Lerue shouted something and the other guards readied to strike. She let free the string and the smallest shadowblack arrow tip formed and vanished. She stuffed the bow into the pocketbag and slinked back.

            And she found the guard’s eyes again. In pain. Waiting, waiting. Not angry. Not mad. Waiting. Like Polip. The eyes lost their crystalsheen, and she knew the boattie’d gone and picked him up, and she felt a lil glad for that.

            Then came the swords. Three at once. Instestinetearing heartcarving muscleripping pain. Through her chest, gut, and neck. And the pain pounded on and never stopped. She wanted release, she wanted something to stop the pain. She wanted death.

            She raspcoughed and sputtered and inched herself away, and when she did, the pain dragged cross her skin. But the more painful part was the mending of her skin. As she moved away, the skin stuck together again, and the bones did too, and it kept her alive.

            Death! Death! Please, death!

But it never came. Course it didn’t. The dead can’t die.

Why her?

Death! Death!

Duty.

Only she could do it. Only she could solve this mess.

Her ears kept pounding and voices round her kept barking and the guards’d frozen up like bloatfish flung ashore, all looking a lil miffed from under the visor, as if they couldn’t quite understand what they’d done, as if they couldn’t stomach the sight of her, crawling and crawling and crawling.

            Lerue kept barking. He jabbed his spear at her, and she kicked herself just outta its reach, where she tumbled down the stairwell a few steps. Each roll had her head bang the stairs, and each bang made the world flash.

            Bang. The stars were there, and so was the guard, and he looked quite peaceful, bobbing along with the boattie.

            Bang. Polip sat at the bank and a boattie waited for him. Every time he tried to stand, chains of mud from the ground yanked him back down.

            Bang. The city sprawled out from the castle. Grey lines ran crisscross and reached the mountains and hills and the horizon. But the lines weren’t lines, they were people. Moving back and forth. They moved fast, and time stretched on, for years and years and years. More years than she could ever learn to count.

And the people moved and talked and explored and warred and lived and died.

            And lived and died and lived and died and lived and died.

She wanted to keep being a kid so so so bad; she wanted to block out her ears and pretend it was all something she didn’t wanna do.

            But Lerue was a cheat! A filthy, slobbering cheat. All the others had to die – she’d died before she’d even lived! But Lerue didn’t care. He was a cheat. A cheat, a cheat, one big fat bloatfish-faced cheat that’d gone and captured Quail and killed lil kids.

            Her eyes snapped open. Lerue loomed over her. She shoved her hand into the bag, ripped out the horrowbow, kicked her leg against the limb, and pulled.

And it pulled easy.

            Lerue raised the mirror. The mirror that’d defeated Quail.

            But Laralet just saw her cute lil self.

She let free the string and the horrorblack arrow lunged out.

            The moment it touched Lerue, he died. No blood, no gasp, no nothing.

He fell onto his fat stomach inches from the heartthumping Laralet.

            Laralet groaned. Everything hurt.

Head rang. Cuts hurt. Whole world spun.

The guards drifted about round her. They all seemed glad. They talked, checked if she were okay, and prodded at her. Relieved and confused.

            She sat there a few minutes. The other guard’d bled, but Laralet didn’t bleed. Her skin stuck back together and smoothed.

Eventually she rolled off onto her feet when the ringing and pain’d gone and cleared up a lil and limped down to where Quail was. The guards didn’t stop her.

            “You’ll need this.” A guard gave her Lerue’s mirror. “Show it to Quail.”

            Quail glowed like a thousand specklestars when Laralet found her. She showed the mirror to Quail and Quail met the surface with her deepsea eyes. The rocks and chains round her cricked and cracked and crumbled.

            “You did well.” Quail stood to her full height and swept Laralet into a gentlebreeze hold. “I’m proud of you.”

            “I missed you.” Laralet rolled her onto Quail’s shoulder. “What’s in that mirror?”

            “Memories, sweet little Laralet.” Quail held her heartbeat, motherwarm close. The tiredness and exhaustion of everything pounced up from all round Laralet. “The mirror showed me the person I once was. The life that I should not have seen.”

            “But it didn’t work on me.”

            “Little Laralet. You never had a life to live. There was nothing to remember. But that’s wrong. There’s enough for you to remember here in Perenot. I remember the day a boatman gave you to me. You’ve grown into a strong little girl.”

            “Lil no more.” Laralet nuzzled her tearwet eyes into Quail’s robes. “I killed a king, didn’t I. I’m your heir now, ain’t I?”

            “Little no more.” Quail drew her lips thin, dismayed. “And my heir indeed. I hope you always treasure your childhood, Laralet, even centuries from now.”

            And so, ten minutes later, when Quail made Laralet close her eyes, she found herself back on the boat, bobbing back to the Spanning Delta. Polip, now a glowfly, bobbed in his lantern.

            Quail had a letter in her hands.

            “Are you curious about what will happen to the other kids?”

            “A lil,” Laralet said and rubbed her eyes.

            “Death must not attach themselves to the world of the living,” Quail said, “but I know the living well. I have served them death for millenniums. I feel Perenot will be the better for Lerue’s death, and I feel they will find their family again.” Quail straightened. “This letter is about you, your mother, and your father. None of whom are alive. Would you like me to read it?”

            “Nah.”

            “No?”

            “All that don’t matter. I got you and I’ve got my swamp. I reckon my mama musta loved me.”

            Quail smiled and dropped the letter into the river. “You made a good choice, my dear Laralet.”

END