The scream tore through the dormitory at 2:15 a.m.—the witching hour's bastard child.
"Wake, lazy maggots! The fields hunger!"
A man with a face like a meat cleaver hurled open the door. Outside, a thousand workers surged toward the fields in a carrion parade, their lanterns swinging like trapped fireflies. Lila's stolen watch trembled on her wrist, its hands frozen just shy of 3:07. Always almost, never arrives.
Brigitte lurched upright, her hair matted with nightmares. Child 09 sat cross-legged on his pallet, eyes gleaming like wet coal. Nana stormed in, her bucket sloshing black water reeking of leeches.
"You three—!" She froze, clutching her rosary. "No soul wakes before my baptism."
She hurled the water at the others. Children gasped as fat leeches writhed down their necks.
South Field
Lila knelt in soil that hissed. The wheat here grew in knotted braids, their stalks weeping a viscous sap that glued her lashes shut. Marcus's voice boomed from a rusted loudspeaker:
"Blight is God's brushstroke! Rot His signature!"
She severed a bundle of wheat—its roots came up tangled in a scarecrow's burlap scalp. Her scarecrow. The one she'd stripped last night. Its straw lips peeled back in a rictus grin.
"Sew the bags tight," barked an overseer, kicking a sack toward her. "The rats feast on doubt!"
The burrow squirmed.
East Field
Brigitte clawed at tomato vines that recoiled like serpents. Each fruit split at her touch, disgorging maggots that rolled into the soil like pearls. A child beside her vomited weakly.
"Eat one," whispered an overseer, his breath sour with gin. "Prove their worth."
She bit. Acid exploded on her tongue.
"S-sweet," Child 95 gagged, juice like pus dripping down her chin.
The man laughed, tossing her a coin blackened by filth. "For your honesty, witch."
West Field
Child 09 moved through the garlic rows like a vicar conducting mass. His scythe flashed, each swing severing bulbs that shrieked as they fell. Workers crossed themselves.
"He sings to them," muttered an overseer, clutching his ax tighter. "The garlic weeps when he's near."
Indeed, Child 09 hummed a forbidden hymn Resurgam in Putredine—the anthem of St. Agatha's first plague. Rotted flesh regloved in splendor. The garlic dried to dust in his pockets.
Noon Feast
The mess hall thrummed with delirious life. Children gnawed mold-speckled bread with the reverence of Eucharist, their bellies swollen with false grace. Child 108—a boy with infected fingernails—leapt onto the table:
"To gained and lost!" His cup overflowed with cider writhing with larvae. "Suffer unto dawn!"
The orphans roared. Brigitte laughed so hard she retched into her palms. Lila watched Child 09 pocket a vial of ash from the hearth.
"For the baker," he mouthed.
Nana's shadow swallowed the door.
Nightfall
They collapsed into bunks slick with mildew. Brigitte's snores bubbled wetly—phlegm and hope. Lila dreamed of the scarecrow again, its voice a rasp of straw:
"Elise begged too, before they took her teeth."
At 2:15 a.m., the scream came anew. Nana's bucket never emptied.
Threshold of the Unseen:
Nana's "mercy" was a hooked kindness.
The baskets Lila and Brigitte carried were woven from reeds that left splinters like serpent fangs in their palms. Packages bound for the Square, stamped with Marcus's grinning sunflower crest. At noon, the orphans devoured rancid mutton stew—eyeballs and tendons floating like communion offerings—while Nana recited Psalm 91: "Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder."
Lila slipped through the farm's shadows wrapped in the scarecrow's shroud—its burlap stiff with the residue of decayed crops and something darker, like earth from a grave left open too long. Moonlight leeched the color from the world, reducing the landscape to bone and ash. Brigitte emerged as a specter from the fog, her laughter thin and rehearsed, a marionette's mimicry of joy.
"Hurry," she hissed, though her voice trembled. "Before the wolves start singing."
The girls darted across a bridge whose wooden planks groaned like arthritic joints. Beneath them, a river choked with dead reeds whispered half-formed words. Lila's fingers brushed a rusted nail driven into the rail—a crooked crucifixion of rotted rope and feathers. Old prayers, maybe. Or warnings.
Beyond the bridge sprawled a wilderness of skeletal birch trees, their bark peeled away to reveal flesh-white sinew. The air stank of spoiled milk. Brigitte's giggles turned shrill as the undergrowth snagged her skirts, thorns clawing like beggars' hands.
"There!" Lila pointed to the cave mouth, its jagged edges blackened as if scorched by fire. Two guards flanked it, their silhouettes warped by the flickering torchlight.
The first guard knelt, sharpening a dagger on a chipped whetstone. His face was a patchwork of shadows, but his eyes glinted—too many eyes, Lila realized. A scar split his brow, embedding a third milky orb that rolled wetly toward the girls.
The second guard stood motionless, his breath rattling like a deathbed sigh. Antlers sprouted from his temple, tangled with ivy and finger bones.
"Trust in the Lord," Brigitte murmured, though her hand found Lila's wrist, stiff as rigor mortis. "They're not men. Not anymore."