TERRIBLY SAD, THIS STORY

Alice and Oliver weren’t sure what to do.

Oliver was certain that something was very wrong with the young mordeshoor, but he couldn’t be exactly sure what the matter was, and anyway, Alice was more frustrated than Oliver, because helping Laylee was her task to undertake and she was turning out to be quite bad at it. To make matters worse, the both of them were just about rotting away in their soggy clothes, their skin so clammy with damp that Oliver was beginning to wonder whether his limbs hadn’t been slathered in cold pea soup. Everything hurt: toes, teeth, joints, and eyeballs. They were exhausted and overwhelmed, tired of schlepping through corpse droppings and desperate for a change of dress and a bite of something warm.

Still, they were strangers in a strange town—and there was much to be disoriented by. What to do?

Alice had been sent here, to this land of cold and death, as a reward for a Surrender well-done. She was a singularly talented young girl, gifted with a magical skill the Ferenwood Elders had never seen before, and though it took them some time to decide where, exactly, they should send her to do a bit of good in the world, in the end she was sent to Laylee with little explanation. This lack of explanation was not without intention—it was in fact a direct response to her very high score. Alice would have to be clever enough to sort out her path, her task, and its solution—all on her own. (Oliver, it should be noted, had not been allowed to accompany her, but the two of them had been in cahoots for so long now that they paid little attention to laws and their consequences.)

But Alice’s earlier optimism was quickly disintegrating, and despite ample evidence that Laylee was in dire straits, Alice found herself grasping for a loophole that might deliver her safely back to Ferenwood—and to Father, who, as Oliver noted, was a Town Elder who might be able to smooth things over. It wasn’t a proud moment for Alice, but Laylee had turned out to be prickly and rude and not at all what Alice had expected.

Even so—

The thing was, Alice had earned a 5 on her Surrender—the highest score possible—and she should have anticipated the levels of difficulty and nuance her task would involve. But none of that seemed to matter now. Laylee had insulted Alice and shut her out entirely, and Alice felt she’d suffered enough. She and Oliver (who was already too eager to eject himself from the madness) were now happily acquiescing to cowardice and entirely willing to give up and go home.* In fact, in a desperate bid to rationalize an abrupt exit, it suddenly occurred to Alice that there was quite a lot of sense in Laylee having abandoned them. Maybe, she thought, they were no longer needed. Maybe this was the official end of it all. Maybe Alice’s task here had nothing to do with her talent—in fact, maybe that was the twist all along.

Could it be? Was this all she’d been tasked to do?

Perhaps—

Perhaps they’d done their bit and should now set off for home? Their challenge had, admittedly, seemed too simple by Alice’s usual standards for adventure, but she supposed spending the evening scrubbing filth from the folds of corpses was enough excitement for one lifetime. Alice shared her ignoble thoughts with Oliver, who responded swiftly and with great conviction—

“Oh, I sincerely doubt it.”

“But why?” she said, pulling a cockroach out of her hair. “It was awful enough, wasn’t it? That could’ve been the whole of it, don’t you think?”

Oliver crossed his arms. “Now, Alice, if you want to give up and head home, you know you have my hearty consent. But you can’t also pretend you’ve done what you came here to do. You know full well that there’s something the matter with Laylee—something worse than her mordeshoor business—and we’ve done nothing at all to help her.”

“Sure we did,” Alice tried to protest. “We washed all those dead people and—”

Oliver shook his head. “You’re missing the point. Tasks are always assigned based on talent. And you’ve not used yours at all.”

Alice stared at her feet, hugging herself against the cold. “And there are never any exceptions to that rule . . . ?”

“I think you already know the answer to that question.”

Alice bit her lip. It was true. She sighed, and with a sad sort of resignation, she said, “So what should we do?”

“Well,” said Oliver, “if we’re going to stay here and see this through, the very first thing we need to do”—he shook a few worms out of his shoe—“is find a way to get clean. Second, we’ll need an entirely new set of clothes.” Oliver leaned in and lowered his voice. “I plan to burn this lot”—he gestured to himself—“as soon as it’s off. I suggest you do the same.”

Alice nodded so vigorously a beetle flew out of her nose.

Now, for a bit of explanation:

Alice and Oliver had traveled to Whichwood via magic, but the decadence could have been dispensed with if they had only been interested in a very long walk. Whichwood was a mere thirty-day hike from Ferenwood, which—had either town ever heard of such absurd inventions as airplanes—would’ve made it an easy five-hour flight. As it was, Alice and Oliver had had to travel for days by underwater elevator (the worst possible way to travel), as Whichwood was a town older and slower than even Ferenwood, and they’d not updated their modes of transportation into and out of the city in nearly a century.