Page 94 of We Already Dug the Grave

Rotting willow

Roots so deep

Searching for some rotting meat.

I come to the garden alone.

My fault. My fault. My fault.

My mind somersaulted. My arms and shoulders screamed as I tugged Casey through the dirt and grass, his head bouncing over tree roots and rocks.

I’d told him to come. I’d told him my secret. And now he was dead.

There’d been that flash of Sight.

Your beloved doomed to become your cursed thing.

And I’d loved Casey. Why hadn’t I told him I loved him?

Did I ever? Did I once?

My face crumpled, and I felt hate course through me. I hate you, Milly Waters, I said.

Somewhere far away, through the woods toward the house, I thought I heard the screen door slam.

If we die

That is fine

I grabbed Casey’s ankles and again began pulling him along the creek trail. I tried not to look at his face. But maybe I could just count his freckles? Like soot flecked on a bed of snow. Blue ringed his lips. Still pretty, my best friend.

I pulled him between two trees, toward the place I’d prepared. The place whose sandy earth was beneath my fingernails.

Casey’s head got stuck among the roots. Inhaling, I let loose a growl and yanked so hard I tumbled backward. His head dislodged from the tight spot, and his body slid as I fell.

The ground that caught me was soft.

This was the place. Not far from the burbling creek. A place he loved. I was once a mermaid here. He was a dragon. Remember that, Casey? How you refused to be a mermaid?

Frances and I’d spent hours in this place, carrying water from the creek to stir up soups and potions in a pilfered soup pot that had been our cauldron. I’d bullied Casey into tasting our potion.

Now here you’ll be forever, Casey. You hadn’t known it was a sleeping potion. Now you’re tucked away for a long, long rest.

It’s nice here, Casey. Don’t you want to rest somewhere nice?

I dropped his legs, and they landed with a thump. My thoughts swam and dove and leapt and refused to line up into something making sense. They were muddy soup in my head. Like mine and Frances’s creek water potion, slipping and slurping and turning everything to fizz.

I squeezed my hands and felt it. The ring. This isn’t mine? Silver like the moon and so cold cold cold.

Cold like a knife in my gut. Someone had whispered, Take this. Keep it.

I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.

Casey gave it to me—I loved him, a flash of something cold—but I can’t because now he’s gone.

Cold belongs with cold. A cold metal against a cold finger. I slipped it from my knuckle. Sleep well.

What next?