“Better,” Sonny said in response to Anilla’s question, “but still not great. I wish we could get him to wake up and eat, because it’d help him make more blood, but my sisters told me not to move him or sit him up until he tried to do it himself because… his intestines were all jumbled up and there was barely enough left of him to stitch back together.”

“I’ve brought him another potion,” Anilla said with a frown, “He should have woken up by now. His flesh should be knitting back together.”

“It is,” Sonny told her, “It has to be. But it was… bad. I was just telling Orenda that if he’s not dead yet I don’t think he will be. I think it would have killed him by now if it was going to.”

“How are you feeling, Rendy?” Anilla asked.

“It isn’t ideal,” Orenda admitted stirring the beans, “But I’m alive, and knowing that I couldn’t be makes me grateful that I am.”

“All these bunny people are delightful!” Anilla said, and Sonny almost lost his hit as he tried to hold back laughter.

“Thanks,” he said as he ashed and repeated, “Bunny people…”

Anilla pushed a chair up to the side of Gareth’s bed and shook him gently.

“Captain,” she said, “Captain, wake up.”

“All those bunny people are delightful!” Sonny whispered to Orenda, forcing his voice up an octave to mimic Anilla’s more feminine sound.

“Don’t make fun of her,” Orenda said seriously and took a bite.

“I can’t make fun of her, but I can be a bunny person?” Sonny grinned, “I see how it is, knife-ear.”

Orenda chewed slowly and considered what he had said.

“How is it?” She asked after she had swallowed, “That you were able to shift at will? For others it seems to be an uncontrollable affliction.”

Sonny held out his cigarette and stared at the way the smoke drifted from the cherry, as if he was considering very carefully how to answer her.

“My dad,” he said, paused, and gathered his thoughts, “Was a complicated man. The only way that I know of to control it is… you can overcome nature, you can fight natural impulses… like you know how you can hold your breath if you want to, but your body doesn’t want you to do it? Will fight you? Will remind you that you have to breath or die? You know how normally it will do it automatically, unless you’re in a situation like… say you’re underwater, and your lungs are screaming for air, but you know, deep in your very soul, that if you try to draw breath you’ll die?”

Orenda nodded.

“That’s why we can do it,” Sonny explained and took the last drag the cigarette could afford him, “If you get pushed to the brink of death… if it’s shift or die… you’ll be amazed at what you can live through.”

“Oh,” Orenda said.

“Tough love,” Sonny said as he snuffed out the cigarette in the ashtray. He stared at nothing for a beat and then went on. “I don’t think the babies, the new ones, or the little ones, will ever learn to control it. Dad wouldn’t do it until we were big enough and… I don’t think any of us who are left are… strong enough to do that shit to someone we love.”

“What did he do?” Orenda asked.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Sonny said before she had even finished the question.

“Alright,” Orenda said and dropped the subject to take another bite of her beans.

Anilla had tilted Gareth’s head to pour the potion down his throat, but when she sat it back against the pillow there didn’t seem to be any noticeable effect.

“Would you rather have a real bed?” Sonny asked.

Honey walked through the doorway and made her way to Gareth, pulled back the blankets and stood there for some time touching him in different places as if she was testing for something. The entire time she said nothing, and her silence unnerved Orenda. Finally, she turned to Sonny and spoke.

“I don’t know what makes you think you’re going to sit here on your ass all day,” She said, “The sun’s risen and we’ve got work to do.”

“Someone needs to watch the patient,” Sonny said defensively.

“He has friends enough to watch him,” She motioned to Orenda and Anilla, “We have to get the nursery clean and the crops harvested if we want to eat this winter.”

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“Right,” Sonny pulled himself up with an exasperated grunt.

“Do you mind?” Orenda asked as she picked up the tray and stood to set it on the table on wobbly legs, “If I see this nursery? I might… there may be something I can do to help.”

“There’s no help for it,” Honey said, “The dead don’t seem to want or need help from the living. The living and the dead are no longer on speaking terms.”

“I think she meant in the clean-up,” Sonny said. “And yes, Rendy, of course. I’ll show you, but… I don’t know that there’s much you can do.”

Orenda nodded and picked up her staff to lean on as she followed him from the room. It seemed that the Brigaddons mostly lived in their underground hideaway, which, the more she thought about it, made the most sense- if they lived above ground to keep their cover they would have to live in the slave quarters. She didn’t know why she thought they would be allowed to live in the house proper as if they owned it when very clearly it had to look as if this Langil person did and they were merely his slaves.

“The nursery is connected to my parents’ room,” Sonny explained, “you have to walk through it to get to their bedroom, so they can hear the kids in the night and whatnot.”

He led her into the living room, and she was shocked to see four young children there, no older than five or six, sitting cross-legged and listening to Mary Sue as she spoke.

“take in the starfruit,” she was saying, “before anyone else. You let the big kids get the other things, and you tell someone like Abby or Gary when you’ve finished a full barrel so they can store it properly. I want to get most of that done today, and I don’t want to see you back in this house until I call you for lunch. If I see any one of you in this house before then I swear to the good god above that I’ll tan your hide.”

“Who’s that?” A little girl asked, pointing at Orenda.

“Oh!” Mary Sue turned to look at her, “Rendy, you’re up. Everyone, this is Orenda Firefist, your new big sister. She’s the one daddy was always going on about. She showed up last night while you were locked up.”

“Really!?” One of the girls asked, and the children all jumped to their feet to surround her. Sonny took a step away from her with a chuckle and watched them swarm.

“These are my younger siblings,” Sonny explained, “Harvey, Angel, Frank and Alice. We keep them locked up when the moons are full so they don’t destroy things. Some people still like to chew through walls, though. Which is… annoying.”

All the children resembled their older siblings with their big silver eyes and soft silver hair, and they all began to speak at once.

“How come your hair is that red?” One asked, “Do you dye it with blood? I’ve never seen anyone with hair that red.”

“Why are you wearing a crown?” Another asked, “She’s an elf too- maybe she’s evil!”

“Did you hurt your belly?” Another child asked, rubbing at the scar on Orenda’s stomach.

“What’s this shiny thing?” Another asked, grabbing for the staff, and seeming to be unaffected by it.

“I’m not sure how to,” Orenda looked to Sonny for help, “I don’t know how-”

“Hey!” Mary Sue barked, “What did I just say? Y’all got work to do! I want to see you in that field, and I don’t want you back in this house until it’s done!” She walked up and grabbed two children by the neck of their shirts and tossed them behind her, then did the same to the two who were left, “Go! Get up there! Now!”

The four children took off down the hidden hallway, giggling and whispering to each other. Mary leaned back and watched them until she was sure they had closed the shelf back over the opening, then turned her attention back to Orenda.

“How is Gareth?” She asked.

“He hasn’t woken up yet,” Orenda told her, “I’m concerned.”

“I’m telling you,” Sonny said, “If he ain’t dead yet, he’ll probably make it.”

“I wouldn’t give her false hope,” Mary Sure chided him, and to Orenda continued, “I won’t lie to you, Rendy, he’s the worst case we’ve ever seen. I’m so, so sorry about last night. Lappy is… not stable.”

“I’m sorry about your father,” Orenda told her.

“It was about the only thing that could take daddy out,” Mary Sue looked to the poster that listed her father’s achievements as fighter, “that man outran the Emerald Knight.”

She pulled herself from her thoughts and continued, “I’m sorry, Rendy, we have to get that nursery cleaned while the kids are out of the house. There’s blood everywhere.”

“I’d like to help, if I can,” Orenda told her.

“You can try,” Mary Sue shrugged, and began to walk down a different hallway.

It was not lost on Orenda that the place was laid out like a rabbit warren, but she had the good manners not to remark upon it. Eventually, Mary Sue opened another door, and Orenda’s blood froze in her veins.

It was a pleasant room, cozy and meant for sleeping, with two rocking chairs and a large crib. A bag of yarn with two knitting needles stuck in it was positioned by one of the chairs, a shelf of children’s books had been pushed up against a wall, a table looked like it had been laid out to change the babies, with a laundry hamper beside it was that was half-full of diapers and sprinkled with some sort of plant that Orenda didn’t recognize.

In the middle of the room laid the headless corpse of a human man that Orenda, based on the head that laid a few feet away by the changing table, thought to be no older than forty. He had been dressed in nightthings, as if he had awoken to be murdered, made of cheap fabric but with meticulous, beautiful embroidery around the bottom depicting rabbits hopping along the hemlines- the clothes were destroyed by the blood that had pooled around the corpse and shot across the room, likely at the same trajectory as the head.

On the wall above the crib, someone had used the blood to write, in tall crimson letters.

FEAR THE WHITE RABBIT.

Orenda didn’t know what to make of that simple message, but she feared they would never get it out of the wall.

“Ideally,” Mary Sue said as Sonny walked to the changing table to roll another cigarette, “I’d like to arrange it at the funeral so that it looks as if he still has a head on his shoulders.”

Orenda nodded, because she could see the logic in that statement, staring at Xaxac’s silver eyes, wide open and staring at something though he could no longer see anything. She thought it was strange that he didn’t look afraid; he looked confused, shocked perhaps, but not afraid.