Demon in the Whitelands by Nikki Z. Richard

Author:Nikki Z. Richard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: YA, fantasy, horror, romance, lgbtqia, religion, diverse book
Publisher: Month9Books
Published: 2019-09-24T07:00:00+00:00

The rest of the day, Samuel felt frozen. He went to the jailhouse and did his duty with Zei. They shared a meal of boiled potatoes and half of a roasted chicken, but Samuel struggled to keep the food down. His stomach weighed heavy, each breath causing his ribs to twinge. He was nauseated and threw up twice. He didn’t do any new lessons with Zei, content to only stand alongside her and watch her sketch pictures of whitelands mountains.

Ebauch Wilkens’s funeral wouldn’t take place until the next day. Samuel pictured the logger’s bloodied mouth quivering as he made his request, his voice weak and desperate.

Rites.

Samuel blinked hard. How many dead bodies had Samuel encountered throughout his life? He never kept count. Wasn’t it supposed to get easier? He wasn’t merely haunted by the logger’s ghost, but also by the nagging guilt of his refusal to offer a prayer. It was illegal for anyone not ordained by the clergy to perform the rites, and he wasn’t a cleric. He needed the loggers and the other patrolmen to understand that, and they weren’t going to learn if he performed the rites. He’d done the sensible thing, so why did he feel so dirty? A chilly wind pushed through the barred window, so Samuel gathered fresh wood and rekindled the fire. The warmth quickly took possession of the prison cell. He rolled up his jacket sleeves and looked on his arm. Against his own volition, he imagined inked roots starting from his elbow and creeping down in complex motions until they reached his wrist.

Samuel heard the chains rattling and turned. Zei stood beside him, the top of her head barely reaching his shoulders. She softly held her stub with her good hand as if she were nestling it safely across her side. She didn’t say anything. She couldn’t. But something about the way her slit-eyes were looking at him made him think she had an interest in his emotional disposition. He wasn’t sure what to tell her, or if she even cared to know.

“I watched someone die. I didn’t … I couldn’t help him.”

Samuel fiddled with the ends of his shirt.

“Have you watched someone die?”

He regretted the question as soon as he asked it. He already knew the answer.

Zei’s bare feet rapped across the dirt floor, the chains around her ankles following her as she made her way to the window. The breeze from outside caused her long red hair to sway in sporadic waves. As usual, Samuel found himself trying to decipher what was going through her mind. Did she care about him at all? Did his question upset her? How much did she understand him, or was it that there was only so much she wanted him to know about her? Where had she come from? What happened to her missing arm? And, since she wasn’t a demon, what was she?

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