“You will stay with us now,” the Sisters tell me, “until your brother arrives.” Jed has still not returned from his rotation on the fence line. The Sisters have sent a messenger to bring him back but we won't begin to expect him for at least a day. Our mother will probably be gone by the time he returns and he won't have the chance to talk her out of her choice.

My mother has chosen to join the Unconsecrated. And I am quite sure that my brother will blame me for her choice. He'll ask me why I allowed her to make this decision for herself, why I did not stand in for her and tell the Guardians to kill her.

I am not sure I will know what to tell him.

It is a complicated process, giving a living human over to the Forest of Hands and Teeth. The Guardians found out years ago that the transfer cannot be done too early because a live human cast into the Forest is nothing but food for the Unconsecrated who will tear at their flesh and eat until there is nothing left.

But at the same time it's too dangerous to have the Infected in the village. The Guardians will not run the risk of having someone Return amongst the living and there is no certainty about when the Infected will die and Return. Everything depends on the severity of the bite: with a small, simple bite, it may take days for the infection to spread and kill, while a gruesome attack can cause someone to Return within heartbeats.

And so the Guardians have devised a complicated system of gates and pulleys that keep the infected in a sort of purgatory between the living and the Unconsecrated. This is where my mother is now and I sit nearby, listening to her pop her jaw and clack her teeth like a cat lusting after a bird as the infection roars through her body. She is too sick to talk now, too ravaged to even understand.

A rope is tied securely around her left ankle and she picks absently at its frayed ends. We are all waiting for the inevitable but know that, judging from her wound, it will take at least a day.

The turn doesn't always come quickly to the Infected.

I'm there with her on the safe side of the fence. But I am not alone because they are afraid I'm not to be trusted and that the sight of my mother as one of the Unconsecrated will cause me to do something terrible and stupid like throwing open all the gates and causing a breach. A Guardian—one of my brother's friends—has been posted to keep watch over me and my mother. He will be the one to operate the gates and he will be the one to kill me if I stray too close to her after she turns. It is the agreement that I struck with the Sisters in order to be with my mother at this time: I can be near her, but if I'm bitten then I am to be instantly put to death.