Chapter Text
Lorna awakes mid-night with a gasp.
A gaunt hollow within her chest. Something festering, some awareness dredged from deep within her.
The Beast is dead. Lorna can feel it.
She can feel it.
It's like worms within her skin, eating away. A hardening wax within her ears, a creeping deafness. Her mouth tastes of spoiled blood, black bile, she coughs, tongue stained with turtle-rot, her bones seek to sing beneath to thin skin, she–
There is something amiss.
This should not be happening.
This should never have happened.
He is gone. She already knows. He is gone. The Beast has flickered out.
She is already so empty now. Without him left to bolster her– for what is she? She is so much less, now– to not have her ‘sister’ (there is not a better word for what she had been) is not a bad thing, not really. To be able to sleep, to choose what it is she does, and when it is she does it, it is nice, but it is–
The forest should not be without him. She feels sick in that it is. He is her—
He was her friend.
And now he is to be nothing.
She lays in bed, stiff, then swings her legs out from thick wool blankets from Auntie Adelaide. The air is cold with winter, and she is still hungry.
Her feet freeze upon bare wood, and she is still hungry.
Now he is gone. And she is still hungry.
He understood her. And now he is gone.
Auntie had thought her better, unwicked, since those boys came, since they chased her sister away, but–
(It is not that she lost control, perhaps not entirely, but Auntie had walked to the kitchen, only days ago, to find Lorna carving apart a man she had dragged in from the road, face and mouth blooden, teeth sharp as nail, eyes pale as moonlight on lake. As she devoured him. )
(She had just been so hungry, and she did need bones, new bones, hers had all been sorted, by size type color taste and quality, she had gnawed through her spare ribs, through all the meat in the house, had looked pale as a ghost in the mirror, needed to eat—)
(for who can fault her for being hungry?)
She had not been better. She is only Herself, now. Not two. Just one, just as starving.
She stumbles down the stairs, takes no care to silence. Auntie will wake, yes, wake to harried footsteps and a missing wool cloak, but Lorna gives no mind to that. The stairs creak beneath her feet, her stomach growls, she needs–
Her foot, bare, sinks into snow, and she stumbles, hand on the doorframe. Eyes to the wood.
What is she doing? What does she need?
No. She takes a step back inside, hears Auntie shift above her head. There is nothing she needs. Beyond perhaps a coat and shoes.
There is only what she needs to do.
His Bones.
She has to find them.
(There are, of course, always more bones to sort.)
…
She hardly takes a breath as she runs through the wood, following a path she could not have explained to how she knew.
A path to Him. Or at least what is left.
His lantern is not there when Lorna arrives, bundled tight in Auntie’s thickest fur coat. His lantern is not there.
There are footsteps all around. An uprooted edel wilts. There is a comb of honey, spidersilk, a teacup.
And there are bones.
Not human ones, that much can be certain. She did not know what she did expect. But it certainly was not two shed antlers where he must have fallen. No body, head or torso to speak up.
Like a shadow fallen to earth.
They are shedding velvet of dark fur, an oilslick mess, shadow partitioning from the white antlerbone beneath.
(She is perhaps glad there is no body. Hunger, dangerous, curls in her stomach.)
(He would have liked to have been eaten, she thinks, to satiate something.)
(That is the hunger talking. No, Lorna, He would kill you for thinking that.)
(He would not have much liked being consumed.)
She lifts them up. Trembling fingers in the snow and wind. Dark velvet sheds against her fingers, oilblood beneath.
His.
They are His.
They are bones to sort.
…
The forest is far too quiet as she walks back to the cabin. A death rattle in the trees. Winter has soaked into the ground, and there is naught a sound to break the quiet mourning of trees.
She knows naught what to do.
Not where to go. To bring them.
The woods must have a Beast. For there not to be—
It is preposterous. It doesn't make sense. The air is too light, the breeze too thin, it is not right. The absence of the choke. The absence of He Who is The Forest, of He Who is the Dark, the voice in the trees, the sirensong of death, a final choked gasp of hope.
Whatever will she do without him?
Whatever will she do as a lonesome, ravenous thing?
…
The cabin is unassuming in the snow, Lorna thinks. She understands how those boys thought it empty. Neither her nor Auntie are very keen on trimming back trees and brush. Too much work to make it more seemly. It is not as if any a soul shall see it.
Lorna had not wanted to bother The Death of Hope. When she was small, an Edel grew about one of the windows, oilslick leaves outside her room. Auntie had thought it a waste of time and diplomacy to trim the thing back. Lorna had, out of curiosity as a child once, tasted the oil it bled.
(She, her not-quite-sister, had taken the reins shortly after, and Lorna had snapped back to her body, face buried within the intestines of some traveler.
It had been a good meal. Auntie had not even caught her that time!
Lorna pushes open the door.
Auntie sits in her rocking chair in the main room, fire lit behind her.
…perhaps she should have taken at least a wee bit of care to not wake her.
“Lorna.”
Auntie stands as Lorna steps in. She does not look upset, but that can be deceiving. Auntie, Lorna knows, is good at not looking upset.
She holds His antlers closer to her chest. Auntie will surely see them; this is not the sort of thing she can hide amongst tibia and femur.
“What have you brought to our home, my sweet child? Best not be more bones.” Does she not know He is gone? Can she not feel the way the forest grieves? “For we have plenty in our– ah. Lorna. Those are not bones.”
Lorna holds them close.
“Lorna, my dear, are those--”
“Aye, mum.” She says, quick, takes a step in towards the door to the downstairs, to where her bones are.“They are the Hope Eater's antlers.”
Auntie looks at her, then to the antlers, “Now my dear, you mustn't keep those here. For the Beast, he shall hastily come to retrieve them.”
“I will be sorting them with the rest, Auntie.”
“My dear one,” Auntie reaches to touch them. Lorna moves away. She will put them with the rest. “I do hope you are not trying to go and become wicked again?”
“Nay. Auntie.”
“Then why will you keep his antlers? If not to adorn yourself with them?”
“He will need them , Auntie. When he returns.”
She does not think he will. If he quite can. There had not been a body.
“You simply wish to keep them safe, and not to wear them on your brow, my dear?”
“Of course, Auntie!”
Could she do such a thing? Don his antlers?
Auntie doesn't exactly look convinced, but Lorna doesn't have to listen to her every word, now. Her sister is gone. She slips down the stairs, to sort them with the rest.
She can feel Him, or at least a fraction of him, as she holds the antlers close. He is not dead. No matter how the forest feels.
The Woods need a Beast, after all.
The Woods need a Beast.
…
She puts Him above the entrance, above the door, to greet her every time she enters and exits. He would have liked this room, all her bones. He would have thought it beautiful. He thought her interesting, The Beast, how like him she was. He had never quite been inside, Auntie does not like him, of course, so he had never been inside.
This is a grand place, she likes to think. It overlooks the dead. She wishes she did have his Lantern. Wherever it is, it should not be there. It should be with his antlers. She should have it. Here. With her.
She is the closest thing to his next of kin.
…she should do that, should she not? Find it. No one else will , and what if someone else tries to light it? Not knowing it's his. That would be a terrible thing.
Where to look, Lorna wonders.
…Where to look?
She does not quite know.
…
There is a tavern in the woods. Lorna has never been, Auntie says such a place will make her wicked. But she is not a child now, and she already is wicked. So it cannot hurt to check.
It is called the Dark Lantern, Lorna discovers as she reads the sign. So it must be a place she will find it! Or well, at least information about it.
It must be.
(She has not been to Town since before Auntie gave up on finding a doctor for her sickness. Wherever else could she look?)
(The Beast was her only friend.)
…
Lorna does not expect the tavern to be as busy as it is this deep into winter. She ducks inside. Takes a seat.
It does not seem the sort of wicked place Auntie made it seem. There is even music! The Beast did so love music. He was a beautiful singer.
“Well hello there!” A woman approaches, and Lorna has to do her very best to not turn tail and run. She… when is the last time she spoke to someone without trying to devour them? She is terribly out of practice.
A large dog trots beside the woman, sits pleasantly beside her table.
“I’m the Tavern Keeper.” the woman introduces herself. “I haven’t seen you around here before!”
Lorna sits a bit taller, draws her bonnet tighter, shy. “I—well, I’m new around here, miss!”
“I can see that much, so, who are you?”
“Oh—I’m Lorna, I’m—I live with my Auntie in the woods,”
“Alright. But who are you ?”
It's a puzzling question for a few moments, before she gets it.
It's like how the Beast is the Beast, when he is also the Death of Hope.
“Oh!” she laughs, shy, “I’m—I’m a Collector.” She does not think they would take kindly to a witch, not really.
“Ahh. What do you collect?”
“Oh. Um.” She swallows, “This and that,” Bones. Many bones. All sorts. That-- Lorna does not think a regular normal person would like that. “Right now I’m looking for something particular, a lantern—”
The tavern keeper inhales sharply, and a hush falls across the room.
Oh. She has said something wrong.
“A lantern?” says the tavern keeper. “You’re looking for a lantern?”
“Um. Aye, ma’am.”
“What,” she says, leans in close, “ sort of lantern?”
Lorna takes a breath.
“The Beast carries a lantern, Collector,” the Tavern Keeper continues.
“Aye. He does.”
“What sort of lantern are you looking for?”
She shifts a little. Nervous. But she did come here for a reason:
“The Beast has--- left,” she says. Died doesn’t— he cannot be dead. “I am looking for his lantern. For um—we would not want someone to relight it, and summon him back, would we?”
She would quite like to. But that does not seem the way to approach this.
The Tavern Keeper pauses, then nods. “Yes. We would not like that. Why do you know this, Collector?”
“Um. My Auntie told me?”
The Tavern keeper squints at her.
Then: “Librarian! Come over here!”
A slight woman looks up, is waved over, Lorna looks up at her, “Didn’t you hear that the Judge was holding a dark lantern?”
“I did!” she confirms, and Lorna exhales.
The Librarian tells Lorna of a man—who sounds to be the Beast’s woodsman– seen with a lantern in the wood.
He lives past the pasture, she is told, beyond the spring. With his daughter.
Lorna thanks them, drinks a cup of warmed milk, then leaves.
She... perhaps will not return to the tavern. Not soon, in the least.
…
Such a long walk, past the pasture, up the mountain, is not a walk for winter, Lorna decides as she trudges back towards her home. The snow is thick already. She will need to wait for the thaw.
It cannot be helped. As much as Lorna would like to run now, the further north she walks the higher the snow will pile.
She sorts her bones, looks up at his antlers.
…
She is getting quite hungry.
Quite hungry indeed.
He would sometimes bring her the fleshy scraps of a planted Edel. She has not his scraps to eat.
She is getting quite hungry.
…
Spring comes, and her showers wash away Winter’s snow and lingering spirit.
The antlers on the door flower. Lorna takes it as a sign.
He is not dead.
He cannot be.
Nothing dead grows.
…
Her Hunger grows, as she walks the path towards the Judge’s home.
Her ribs stab out from her chest, wrists boney, cheeks gaunt.
She is starving.
Her sister would have prowled off by now. Her sister is not here.
It has been since she was very young that she hunted on her own. The last time… well, she and Auntie still sold needlework, lace and spells in the city! She had been in the park, she had counted the other children, watched them from up in a tree.
Looked for a slow one. A weak one. A meaty one. One she could catch, and when she had spotted her prey, she had watched, waited until he wandered beyond the trees.
Auntie had dragged her from his still bleeding body, screaming. Lorna’s mouth had been bloody. She had bitten open his arm, stripped skin and fat from bone, but had only managed a few bites before being caught.
Nothing had ever tasted quite so sweet as copper blood and muscle.
They had left the city after that.
In the cabin, hunting was simpler. Setting traps when Auntie left her time to Snares, pits, or, if she got too faint, her Sister would crawl up through her chest, and Lorna would wake up full and fed, to Auntie ringing the bell.
She does not have snares. But she is a young girl, and she feels quite too thin, and she does have a plan.
Laying beside the road, trying to look as helpless as she can be. Fainted, she styles herself, sickly.
It takes several hours for someone to stop, to spot her. A woman steps from the carriage, calling out, concerned.
(It is a talent, to be young and helpless, to be pale and sickly. They want to help you, they offer themselves to your teeth)
Once the woman kneels beside her, Lorna lunges, teeth longer than the spokes of her carriage wheels. She tears the life from the woman’s throat.
Blood has never tasted sweeter.
The Beast was better at this than her, Lorna thinks over grisled ribs she has broken back, knuckle deep in organs. With teeth, she strips skin, meat, and marrow from bone.
The Beast was a hunting thing. Slow and in pursuit. Perhaps she is a luring thing.
Slender fingers rip heart from chest, and Lorna takes a bite.
Being wicked cannot be too terrible, when it means she can feast like this.
No matter what Auntie says.
She is a witch. They could burn her for any old reason. Eating people is hardly that wicked.
He understood. He always did.
Lorna slips the best of the ribs into her bag, pries jaw from head, and arm from shoulder. A fine snack for the road, she thinks.
Perhaps even a delicacy.
…
The Judge’s house is settled far from any town. The walk on foot is shorter than she imagined it to be. She had figured it to be a several weeks’ journey.
It is not. At least, not in the way she thought it would be.
The path was better defined than she did think it would be.
(It does not occur to her that She may be moving faster than she knows)
The house is well cared for, Lorna thinks, as she stares at it from the treeline.
The lawn is well tended, the leaves raked, the well’s roof finely thatched, and the house’s shingles expensive.
She stays behind treeline, behind the border of woods and home, watches it, for its people. None emerge, and her patience is fleeting.
So she approaches. Crosses to lawn, from wood to home, from grass to steps. She knocks on the door.
It opens shortly, a man– balding, tall, with glasses– regards her.
The Judge. The Woodsman. The Lantern Bearer yet.
“Hello,” she greets, grabs the door to hold it open. Perhaps a hasty move, as his eyes widen somewhat. “Are you the Judge?”
He does a double take, “Why, uh- yes,”
“That’s lovely,”
He looks like he would have large bones.
Her mouth itches. Gums aching. This man killed the Beast. She could not say how she knows.
Killer, she thinks, I could eat you as easily as you snuffed him out.
She shifts her tongue so her teeth do not pierce it.
“I have traveled far. I heard of you several towns back.”
She wants to rip him to blood and tattered skin.
He would taste so very good.
“Might I come in? I have need of your counsel.”
“I’m not a lawyer,” he says, and Lorna doesn't quite know the difference, she feels her patience waning further.
“Oh but you have such a lovely home,” She steps forward, past the door, feels her body shift, enpallored, not quite as human as she might seem.
He moves to block the door. To pull it shut.
But she is already quite wicked.
“Won’t you let me in, Woodsman?”
“I don't know who you think you are, young lady—”
“My name is Lorna, ” she says, “and you have something that does not belong to you, Lantern Bearer. ”
Her neck snaps sideways, her jaw wired open, and she is hungry, she is so very hungry. “ Where is the lantern? ” she growls, hands shifted to knives.
He screams in shock. Good, she thinks. Killer, she thinks. He stumbles back, but she is already through the door, upon him, over him.
She does not bite yet. Does not tear skin, drink blood, collect bone.
Her sister would have already killed him. But she needs answers, not more bones, not right now.
He falls, and she is—
She is so very, very hungry.
“You will tell me.” Her nails are sharp, her breath is cold, ice, and he tries to scramble back.
She is stronger than him. It is a wonderful feeling, strength.
“A— a cat took it!” he fumbles out, and that—
What?
She starts to formulate a response, but there is movement above him, behind him, a girl, brown hair, a daughter?
And then a glass jar hits her face. Shatters against her forehead, she hisses, reels back, off of him, and—
She enjoys eating children, their bones snap so easily, so fun to sort.
Lorna reaches for her, starving, but—
She’s shoved back, harsh, by the Lantern Bearer, shoved out the door, and it slams in front of her, Lorna screams, banshee, tosses herself against it, gouges into it, crawls the outside of the house, but there is no other entrance, nothing she can do, and by the time she returns to the doors, her teeth have retreated back to her gumline.
She does not knock again. The Lantern is not here.
…
The Beast would like to burn this place, when he returns.
(And he would like his own revenge. She should not take it from him.)
(Not yet.)
(No matter how delectable their bones would taste.)
…
“A cat! Auntie, he said a cat took the lantern!” Lorna complains, leans over the table as she sips turtle soup.
It quiets her stomach. Soothes her jaw. Makes the gnawing within her retreat a few steps away. Auntie eats the turtles because they make other things wicked, and Auntie is too nice to ever become wicked.
Auntie says eating them might help her to be less wicked, because her sister was so wicked that her absence has left a hole in her, that maybe some wickedness could help.
(Lorna has, of course, elected to not tell Auntie she has been devouring people when the hunger comes. That the bones have migrated upstairs, to fill her closet and beneath her bed)
“What could that possibly mean? Do you know, Auntie?”
Auntie leans forward, sips from her own cup, “Has the Beast spoken to you of Enoch?”
Auntie never did like when Lorna would talk to him, walk with him, but she has confessed now that he is dead, that he is her friend, that he would visit the Edel outside her window. And Auntie supports her in ‘trying to make certain he does not return’ - even though Lorna is sure that he will. Somehow. She does not know how she will explain it when he does.
But this is a problem for a later version of herself. Explaining to Auntie why the Beast is back.
“Enoch— why would— oh. He is a cat, isn’t he! You are brilliant, Auntie! Thank you, thank you!”
Auntie Whispers rocks in her chair. Lorna finishes her soup, walks it to the washbasin.
…She is still so very hungry.
…
Pottsfield is a quaint place, Lorna thinks, as she stands at the fence. She has never been before. It is so far from her cabin in the woods. And it is quieter than the town beyond the wood where Auntie would bring her to the doctors. More open sky than Lorna has ever seen.
The fence is important, Lorna can feel it, as she stands behind it.
Crossing it, it feels, is not something she can undo.
She does anyway, and as soon as her foot meets grass, she—
This is not the woods.
It is not. It is heavier, thicker, like the air sticks to her mouth, to her eyes, she can—
She can feel it.
It is not the woods, not in the way town is not the woods, town is a pause in the woods, the city is a pause in the woods, but this is—
The Woods are not here. Could not be here. An Edel would simply refuse to root.
She takes a breath—holds it, then exhales. Her lungs feel terribly heavy, like there is simply more in the air to breathe.
The Beast was ever so fond of the Lord of Harvest, Lorna could tell, he spoke of him so very often. So surely Lord Autumn would like him back, surely. He is not dead, the antlers flower, he even has His Lantern.
Surely he would like Him back. Surely.
Mayhaps she will not even be alone in trying to find a way to bring him back.
As she walks down the path, she sees a man.
Straw-wrapped, short, he is. He is tending a field of growing corn, plucking choking weeds from stalk. Lorna, feeling shy, or perhaps on fawn’s legs, approaches.
This is all Unknown to her. This place. Why is he dressed like that?
Before she can speak, he straightens up, faces her, he must have heard her, Lorna thinks.
“Howdy!” His face is a mask, clay, painted with what Lorna thinks hopes to be a pleasant smile. She is not quite sure it is. “You don’t look to be from around here, Miss.”
No. No she is not.
A hat covers the rest of his head, and a hood his neck. She cannot see beneath it.
“I— I am from the woods,” she says. “I need to meet with Enoch.”
“Enoch?” He sets his hands on his hips. They’re wrapped entirely in straw. “What of Enoch?”
“I– I must speak to him. It is important.”
“Well— I can’t exactly get you an audience with the mayor! I’m just a farmer, miss,”
The mayor?
“But maybe my friend the Miller can!” He continues, before he starts walking, and before Lorna can ask why meeting with the mayor would help her talk to Enoch.
Perhaps the mayor speaks to him? Or perhaps the Mayor is like Auntie Adelaide! Auntie Adelaide could contact the Beast easily. Auntie Whispers did not much like when Lorna would stay with her. Because it would always make her wicked again.
“Come on, up to my house,” he continues. “You must be quite hungry after your travel!”
“No, I um—”
“I have freshly baked potatoes and soup in the pot. I will check with the Miller, make sure he can help you. Yes. I will make sure he can.”
She can’t squeak in a word of protest as she’s shepherded up and into a house, left with a bowl of potato soup and water, and left alone to sit.
After a few bites, she decides not to eat it. It just isn’t very appetizing. Too salty, perhaps, too chalky.
…
The farmer returns, some time later, with a hand-drawn map in hand, and somehow, what feels like an even wider grin upon his ‘face’.
“I’ve got you a map to my friend the Miller’s house! Yes, the Miller will be able to help you speak with the mayor. She told me so herself!”
She takes the map, sets her rather untouched bowl of potatoes aside, steps towards the door, and out.
She turns around, “Thank you, mister,” she starts, but the man waves it off.
“Oh it's nothing! But do hurry; the Miller doesn’t like visitors after dark.”
She’s about to respond, but the door clicks shut behind her.
And then she is alone again.
There is something off about this town.
Something wrong. Lorna takes a moment to collect herself, takes a breath, and looks to the map. She’d best start walking then.
The walk feels longer than any walk she’s taken in the woods for months. Every step feels like a fight against the ground, like she could fall into solid earth.
It is disconcerting.
She arrives at the miller on the hour, she knows, because church bells toll in the distance. The door to the building she assumes must be the mill swings open before she even knocks. She’s greeted by a watermelon grin and wheatwrapped hands, “Well hello there miss!”
The woman’s face is painted onto the watermelon shell, lips, nose, all delicately made, but the eye sockets are not so simple, nor as beautiful. They are carved, and leaking red juice.
Lorna swallows. Wishes she were, perhaps, back home.
“Are you that poor lost girl Mr. Clay said wanted to meet with the Mayors?”
“Yes,” she says quickly. A mayor, a mayor will surely help her set up a meeting with Enoch, perhaps. “Although, I am not lost–”
“Well right this way then!” the Miller interrupts. “They live right down the way, although– while I was waiting for you, I decided to press you some juice! You must be oh so thirsty, with all that walking you’ve been doing. And we don’t often have visitors here, in Pottsfield, no one really passes through!”
She wants to refuse, but before she can, the Miller has disappeared inside the mill house.
She returns minutes later, holding a glass bottle of juice, bright pinkish-red in hue. Lorna’s stomach turns, perhaps a little, as it is the same color as the liquid rolling down the woman’s cheeks.
She will... not be drinking this. No, thank you.
She’s led down the road, towards a small little building with a piece of bread on the side.
M & M Bakery, it reads.
“Here we are!” says the Miller, “The Mayors’ Bakery.”
Oh.
She takes a deep breath.
When she turns to explain the mistake, the Miller is already halfway up the street, walking away. She tries to call out, but she keeps walking, and Lorna is, evidently, not heard.
Fine.
She shall go inside. Ask for instructions as any traveler would.
The bakery is, as everything in this town seems to be, quaint.
But the bread that sits on the counters does not look as if it were baked today. Perhaps not even yesterday. Flies buzz about the room, not… terribly many, but more than a bakery should have.
But what does she know? She is not often in bakeries. There are none in the woods. At least not ones she is aware of.
“Why, hello,” There is a woman, thin as a pole, at the counter. She leans forward.
Her face is covered by a veil.
Not… the oddest thing Lorna has seen. More sensible than a watermelon.
“I need to meet with the Mayor,” she says, somewhat desperate at this point.
“Well, I’m Miss Mayor–”
“No, no. Um- The Miller brought me here, she misunderstood me, I– I need to meet with Enoch, and a Farmer told me the Miller could get me a meeting with the Mayor–”
“Ohh. No no, no worries, darling, The Mayor, easy mistake, when you’re from out of town, I’ll bring you to his secretary! He’s right up the road, but first, you look famished, how about some pastries? They just finished cooking–”
Lorna takes a breath in, then out.
She is famished. Has been since she was but a babe. But not for pastries.
“No thank you, ma’am, I really must see the mayor–”
“Oh but dear, it’s only polite–”
She closes her eyes, takes a breath, “I shall eat it on the road.”
As it turns out, the pastries had not been “just cooked”, in fact. Lorna would be surprised if they were cooked this week. They are stale, hard, and she is balancing trying to appear to be eating them, and not at all wanting to.
Finally, they arrive at a grand building.
“Good luck with the mayor, darling!” says the Baker. Lorna turns to thank her for the directions, but she’s already walked away.
Lorna walks inside.
A skeleton sits at the desk, blush applied to bony cheeks, hair woven of straw.
Lorna freezes.
(There will always be more bones to sort.)
Of course; they’re skeletons. This explains the masks. That explains everything.
Lorna approaches. Hopes that finally, she’s in the right place, please.
“Um, hello, Miss?”
The secretary's head swerves towards her. “Welcome in. May I assist you today?” She’s chipper, sounds kind enough.
“Um. Yes. I need to meet with the mayor?”
“Oh! Of course. Do you have an appointment with him?”
An appointment?
“No..?”
“Hm.” She leans back. “Well– I will go up and ask him if he can take a walk in, but I do think we are booked on appointments for the foreseeable future, he’s a very busy man, our mayor–”
“It's about The Beast,” she cuts in. “I simply must speak to Enoch–”
“Oh! It's about Mr. Hope? Why didn’t you say as much? Enoch will surely speak to you! He truly has been in such low spirits since his passing. Are you a friend of Mr. Hope?”
Oh.
Enoch is the mayor.
That perhaps makes sense.
“Yes. I am,” Lorna says. “It is quite important-”
“Oh no worries, it's wonderful, to have someone here. Mr. Hope’s loss has truly made Enoch so very sad. He will love a visitor of his, I’ll bring you up right now,”
Lorna is brought upstairs. The secretary knocks on the door, simple, like The Lord Of Harvest is not behind it.
Come in.
says a voice, echoes a voice, and Lorna takes a moment to steady herself.
Time to meet someone like in power to the Beast.
She steps inside.