She had let go of my hand now, head bowed as the ghost consulted its memories to track down what was wrong with me and how to fix it. If it could be fixed.
“Melory?” I pressed, after she had been silent for a good count of two hundred. “Mel?” A sudden stab of horror went through me. I thought somehow I’d banished the ghost, driven it away and cursed the village even more, just because I was me and even the ghost couldn’t bear to be near me. I thought it had taken Melory, too, that any moment her body would just slump sideways. I had ruined everything. I was a blight to anyone and anything near me.
It was not Melory that answered me. I saw her jaw clench, as though she was trying to stop the words. The voice still sounded like hers when it came out, but it had nothing of my sister in it.
“Irrevocable deterioration of antihistaminic biome.” I could see her muscles twitch and writhe beneath her skin as though she was fighting, wrestling with the ghost to try and stop the next words. It was strong, though, that ghost. It was as old as Aro, born with the first houses, with the first blistering of the wasp hive in the fork of the tree. It had seen us come and go in our brief lives and it knew what was best for us. Not for me, not even for any one individual, but for us as a group. That was its concern; that was what all the ghosts cared about.
The words “Prognosis negative,” forced their way from her. “Incompatible with ongoing community placement,” and then she squealed and spasmed away from me, kicking out at nothing, beating her fists against the walls of the house. One eye stared at me, the ghostlight dancing and stuttering behind the other. I went to comfort her, but she threw me off so hard the breath whuffed out of me as I landed on my back.
“No!” she got out, in her own proper voice and full of anguish. “Handry, it wants the Lawgiver!”
“I’ll get her.” I started up but she grabbed me and almost threw me down again. I could feel the conflicting signals jolting through her body to her hands. Her grip left fierce red bruises against my skin.
“It wants to tell the Lawgiver,” she stammered. “It wants. It wants. Progression of decontamination irreversible. It wants me to—No! Recommend expulsion. Stop it!”
I was frozen, feeling horror clench my innards, because her voice was raw with grief and fury but the ghost was serenity personified.
Expulsion, it had said. I didn’t understand at first.
Then with a great effort Melory threw the ghost off, grabbing me by the arms and practically shouting into my face. “Handry, run away! Get out of here! It wants, it wants to—! I won’t, you hear me? I wonnnnnnnn.” She put her hands to the bloated, ridgy skin where the ghost lived, as though she was trying to rip it open. I fought with her, but right then she was stronger than me, shoving me towards the door. I saw blood drip from her good eye and the corner of her mouth.
“Go now!” she insisted. “It wants you cast out. It’s trying to tell the Lawgiver. Handry, the ghosts can speak to each other. It wants you held. It’ll make me Sever you for real, and then you’ll die. You’ll die like Sethr. Handry, please!”
I could already hear odd voices across the village: sleepy, irritated people woken by all the shouting. Any moment one of those voices would be Elhern’s, or rather not hers but the flat, authoritative tones of the Lawgiver ghost that lived inside her. It would be calling for me to be taken, like Sethr was taken. I was not just incurable, I had been judged an enemy of the community, and they would cut me off completely.
In my mind was Sethr’s twisted corpse, starved thin, dying in poisoned agony as his body rejected all the good things the world had in it, as the world rejected him.
I stumbled out into the night, looking up at the utter dark where the tree’s spread of branches obscured the stars. The only constellation I could see right then was made of the lamps people were lighting as they woke up and went out to see what was happening. When the Lawgiver finally got the message from the doctor ghost, there wasn’t one of them who wouldn’t seize on it greedily. Hadn’t they known I was no good? Hadn’t there been some part of them insisting that I was trouble, a threat to their children and their lives, no matter what I did or how hard I worked? Before, perhaps they would have been able to reason their way out of the conclusion, but the moment my nature had the Lawgiver’s official stamp on it, why would they even try?
Only Melory had ever stood up for me, since the accident. She wouldn’t be able to, anymore. The ghost wouldn’t let her. It hated me. No—worse even than that. Hate was a human thing, something you could at least spit in the face of. The ghost had just judged me not fit to live, of insufficient benefit to Aro, not worth keeping around. I was like a pest to be killed in the fields, a predator to be driven from the herds, out into the wilderness to die.
I wanted to go back into our house, the house we had lived in with Ma, that we had shared since Ma’s death. I wanted to crook my fingers and gouge away at Melory’s face as if I could carve the doctor out of her until only my sister was left. I knew it was useless, though. The doctor was part of her, it went all the way into her mind and her bones. When the tree had chosen her, she had become something more than human but something less than my sister.
With the increasingly angry sounds of the villagers in my ears, I fled Aro, blundering blindly into the night.
IV.
I THOUGHT I WOULD DIE.
I kept running until I was past the further fields, outside anywhere that Aro and its ghosts claimed. In my head the villagers were on my trail, coming with slings, spears, with lanterns and righteous anger. I could picture all those familiar faces twisted by the same emotion, as though they had all kept a ghost inside them, all this time. I could remember them before the accident, that was the worst thing. If I had been born to this, surely it wouldn’t be so raw? But I’d been one of them, once. And no doubt if this had happened to someone else, I’d be with the mob, a cudgel in my hand and no doubts in my head.
Looking back, now, I don’t know if they even stirred themselves beyond the outer ring of houses. The pursuit was in my head by then, driving me on. I heard my own hoarse, desperate breathing and took it for the roar of the mob. I only knew that I must get clear of any part of Aro. If I was discovered in the furthest corner of the furthest field then they would kill me or drag me back for Melory—expressionless and with the ghostlight unbearably bright in her face—to paint with the Severance and complete my casting out.
I only stopped running when I saw there were trees all around me. I was out in the forest, where only the hunters and the boldest of travellers went. Ma had died out here, and so had plenty of others, because the world was a harsh and hostile place and we could only survive by leaning on each other. Everyone knew it.
I knew it. I stood there alone, knowing it. All around me the trees creaked faintly as they grew, their branches sawing against one another and their leaves whispering. I heard the sharp cry of a Jibbit from far off, then an answering call from closer by, picturing their low-slung bodies sliding through the dark, hand-like mouths reaching out to hunt grubs and worms amongst the roots. Jibbits wouldn’t hurt people, but they were prey for things that would. Every time one called to its neighbours I wanted to find it and shush it in case it brought down an Arraclid or worse on me.