"It isn't safe here," said Locke. "Wraiths come from the ground."

"Well, my home was burned," said Nicke.

"I'm talking about sleeping in a tree."

"Tenarie don't do that."

"I'll show you how. It's actually pretty comfortable."

"I sleepwalk sometimes."

Locke snickered.

With a little rope and a lot of reassurance, he convinced Nicke it was safer. As we moved high into a tree, away from the earth and the gnymes and the dead, we scared a sizable horned owl from his majestic perch.

The boys fell asleep, and I was left alone. Left with my fears and Nicke's silent sylphe, while the boys slept. I tried to keep vigil, knowing the height wouldn't necessarily save them from a wraith. But I could hear very little and see even less. Though I did hear ghostly howls crying for the vanished moon.

As dawn came, the black sky turned to dark gray, not enough light to finish off our wraith. After rummaging for breakfast, the boys set to digging two graves. For a long spell, the only sound was the clank of steel into dry dirt.

Locke broke the silence when he asked, "What happened to the other boys who escaped?"

"After I poured the vial, I got stuck inside the village and had to hide beneath the dead so the Kyrie wouldn't find me. It took many hours before they all stopped breathing. I went back to the whispering thorns, but everyone was gone. Then you came. I thought you were one of them."

"You thought I was one of the Hundred?"

"You're a Kyrie."

Locke put his shovel to the ground and jumped on it, stabbing deep. "Are you going to try to follow the others who escaped?"

Nicke shrugged with a lost look on his face.

"What about your uncles or cousins?"

"This village was my family." As he said it, the smoke rose from the ashes around us.

I looked at Nicke and his ghostly demeanor. What would he become if left alone with his hatred and suffering? It horrified me to imagine. The path would lead somewhere dark and loathsome, but how could he change course after so great a tragedy?

"Come with us," said Locke. "You can live at my house and work at the ferry with me."

Nicke looked doubtfully at Locke.

"I'm serious," said Locke.

Nicke stared into an uncertain future. If there were a clear alternative, one stronger than searching for the remnants of a shattered village, he probably would have taken it.

"Alright then, that's settled," said Locke, even though Nicke still hadn't answered. "You'll come with us."

After a moment of surprise, Nicke's face dropped into a lopsided smile, not a strong one, but better than nothing. He nodded. But something was still missing in his eyes. He needed more than a place to go. More than just a friend. He needed life. And healing. Another long silence lingered under the crushing heartbreak. Luckily the shovels made noise as they cut deeper and deeper into the ground.

The boys didn't have a good way to lower the bodies, so, when they dropped down into the earth, I was glad the graves weren't deep. Then they covered them with dirt and a layer of heavy stones.

"May the valkalysae carry you home," said Locke, speaking directly to the dead.

We left Nicke and Ashe alone to weep over two mounds of fresh dirt.

When we were a quiet distance away, wisdom came to me, wisdom hard to hear yet easy to speak, wisdom flitting on the wind: "If he doesn't forgive them, the hate will follow him the rest of his life."

"Picke, what the Hundred and those Tenarie warriors did to Nicke can't be undone. There are no valkalysae. Death takes and never gives back. So there's no forgiving what they've done. And if I can't forgive them, how's Nicke supposed to? It's beyond mortal strength."

"Maybe with divine strength," I said, unsure.

"How?"

"What?"

"How's he supposed to get divine strength?"

I looked down because of shame. "I don't know." I should have known, but I didn't. For a while, nothing more was said. We watched Nicke weeping beneath his sylphe. My failure to give an answer gnawed at me. I was supposed to be a hero's sylphe, a substantial voice, one people listened to. Which meant I needed to say something more than I don't know.

After a long time, Locke walked up to Nicke and touched him on the shoulder. The boy knelt in the dirt, and tears streaked his pale skin. As if to deflect any questions or conversation, Nicke said, "We should go." But he didn't abandon what was left of his family. Instead, he stared at the mounds, still kneeling. His wild white hair fell over his face as he shook his head.

"Ashe told me I had to do it," said Nicke. "He told me pouring that venom in the water would fix things."

His small, child shoulders hung under a great weight.

"But it was a lie." Nicke's thin voice was pulled taught, nearly to breaking. "The venom didn't fix anything. It didn't heal the knives in my heart. It didn't bring my family back." He broke down again, leaning forward onto the graves, bawling. "How am I ever going to feel better? I just want to die."

We watched in silent misery, not knowing what to say or do. As we watched, an oath began to rise in our mind, becoming clearer each time it repeated, echoing as if from Numa herself, till finally Locke spoke the words aloud, words that resounded as if I myself had spoken them:

"I swear, by my bones, by my blood, by my breath, and by the empyrean, I will do all I can to heal your wounds."