So she did the only sensible thing she could think of: As her motor skills were slowly returned to her, she mustered what little strength she had left and ripped herself free of Oliver’s embrace. Half dragging, half stumbling, she ran home—paying no mind to Oliver’s stunned cries or Alice’s shouts of surprise—and, collapsing as she crossed the threshold, she locked the heavy wooden door behind her, leaving the tortured pair of Ferenwoodians in her wake.

Alice and Oliver pounded against her door for at least a dozen minutes before their throats went raw from shouting and their fists were bruised by the effort. Finally, fatigue and defeat collapsed into one complicated failure, and silence flooded the halls of Laylee’s home. Relieved, chest heaving, Laylee finally made an effort to move. But in the time it took her to get to her feet, the peace was split open by a series of piercing screams.

Maman was in a right state.

Her disappearance the night before was owed to her cowardliness and nothing more; Maman’s fragile spirit had been frightened by the disturbance of strangers, and so she’d hidden instead of helped, and now she’d reemerged, more irritated and more impossible than ever. Let us remember that Maman was visible only to Laylee (who’d not shared her spirit-speaking abilities with a single living soul) and, as a result, no one could see or hear what was happening to her now—not even Alice and Oliver, who’d pressed their tired ears against her door, hoping for a sound of life.

Sadly, only the dead were making any noise at the moment, and it was all Laylee could do to keep from screaming out loud. Maman had cornered her, screeching and wailing about the state of Laylee’s filthy clothes.

This last bit was difficult to ignore.

All three children were exceptionally filthy. Not only had they spent the night scrubbing corpses, but they’d then promptly fallen asleep in the waist-deep snow. They’d been mucked up and melted on, and—though she couldn’t have known it at the time—Laylee had fallen asleep on a small family of spiders, and their broken legs were still caught in her eyelashes. It was a small mercy then that Laylee had been too preoccupied to welcome her guests inside or offer them something to eat; had she done so, Alice—who’d just picked a fingernail out of her ear—might’ve arranged the contents of her stomach all over the poor girl’s floor.

But Alice and Oliver were either too exhausted or too afraid to pursue Laylee any further. Oliver wouldn’t dare break another bedroom window, nor could he bring himself to use his magic against her. Heartbroken, he’d given up entirely, slumping to the ground behind Laylee’s door and saying nothing at all, only occasionally shooting dejected, harried glances at Alice instead of speaking aloud his fears. No, he couldn’t have known how awful Laylee was feeling, or how terribly Maman was torturing her at that moment.

“Filthy, useless, foul girl—”

Laylee clapped her hands over her ears.

“—nasty hands, nasty hands, blistered fingers and broken skin—”

Laylee squeezed her eyes shut.

“—never raised you to be this way, to live like an animal, never clean, never clean—”

Alice had managed to peek through a part in one of the window’s curtains, but Laylee’s furrowed brows and pinched lips were impossible to understand. In fact, Alice, a decidedly tender girl, couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps she and Oliver were the problem—

“Hiring strangers to stay the night, too weak to do the work yourself—”

—and though they were indeed a small part of the suffering, they were actually a very important part of the solution. They just didn’t know how much.

Laylee was usually better prepared for Maman’s insults. Most days she could handle the onslaught of anger, the violent humiliation, the accusations of incompetence. But Laylee hadn’t slept more than a wink in thirty-six hours, and she was collapsing from the inside out. Her body was beaten, her mind was broken, and now her spirit, too, was beginning to fray. Laylee Layla Fenjoon was stronger than most, wiser than some, and absolutely, unequivocally ancient for her age. But even the strong and the wise and the ancient have faltered without compassion or companion, and while Baba had madness and Maman had nonsense, Laylee, in their absence, had locked hands with loneliness, darkness feeding darkness until all light was lost. She could no longer remember what it was like to live without a broken heart.

It was unfortunate, then, that she saw little value in the company of her strange guests. In them she might have found friendship; instead she found fault and reason to fear, and so she spared them no thought as she abruptly abandoned them. Wordlessly, she charged up the castle stairs, locked herself in the toilet, turned on the water, and fell sideways into the tub—where she would remain for some time. She didn’t care what happened to Alice and Oliver. In fact, she secretly hoped they’d be gone before she returned.

Dear reader: Laylee would one day look back on these early moments with Alice and Oliver with heartbreaking regret—a remorse so parasitic it would follow her forever. But she needn’t be so hard on herself. It is, after all, a simple and tragic thing that on occasion our unkindness to others is actually a desperate effort to be kind to ourselves. I remind her of this even as I write to you now, but still, she struggles. How very important and infuriating it is to have to remind a smart person not to be so stupid as to give up on themselves.