The Enterprise of Death

by Jesse Bullington

  “So if you’re asleep and the old man wants to give you a poke that’s alright so long as you don’t wake up? They kill rapists where I come from, ape, they chop them up and burn them.”

  “No,” said Awa. “No, I’m not—”

  “This is why he killed me,” Omorose said sadly. “You got me killed because you’re so nasty.”

  “What? No—”

  “Yes you did. You’re just like him, that’s why. He knew you were just like him, a pathetic fat bitch who can’t have what she wants unless she steals it, who has to open graves to find a girl who will suffer her kiss. You’re just like him, you—”

  “No!” Awa shrieked, wrenching Omorose out of her corpse and snatching up stones, walling in the cadaver. “No no no!”

  When the tomb was resealed Awa wiped her tears away with gritty fingers and gathered her blankets. Turning in the doorway, she yelled at the crypt, “You stay in there until you behave!”

  The necromancer did not protest when she dumped her belongings in front of his hearth and informed him she would be staying. The concubine began saying something vile but Awa ran out before she could finish, her tutor chuckling in his chair. Awa paced the perimeter of the mountaintop, her hoof kicking pebbles over the edge, her ragged sniffling unheard by all but the dead.

  “Awa.” She heard him behind her in the darkness, and she paused as the bandit chief approached. “Is everything alright?”

  She turned and looked miserably at the bones of the man who had brought her there, who had brought all of them there, and then she threw her arms around him, his ribs jabbing her chest, and she cried and cried. He comforted her as he had when he delivered her back to the necromancer following her escape attempt, his fingers catching in her short, matted hair. She had no water left in her eyes and her chest hurt, and though she had never heard the expression she knew her heart was broken.

  “I’ve got a surprise for you,” he whispered when she had pulled back, past embarrassment but tired of feeling the dead press against her.

  “Oh?” she said, almost able to stop thinking about Omorose for a moment.

  “Do you like wine?”

  “What?” Awa blinked. “Wine?”

  “Wine.” His skull bobbed in the darkness. “We had some, my friends and I, and it was left in the cave when we all were taken. I retrieved the cask on the way back from fetching wood on one of my first trips below, and have kept it hidden. I was waiting for a special occasion to give it to you.”

  This brought on the longest jag yet, and being a dry run it hurt more than ever as Awa sobbed. He helped her along to the little pit in the stone where the keg was stowed, and, fishing it out, they sat side by side on the edge of the cliff and she drank. The bandit chief had her pour a little from her cupped hand onto his extended tongue so he could taste it, which caused him to make spitting noises.

  “Don’t drink it,” he said. “It’s gone sour, I’m afraid.”

  “I don’t care,” said Awa, slurping out of her hand. “At least it doesn’t taste like chestnuts or wormwood.”

  “It will make you sick.”

  “Don’t care,” said Awa. “And if it does I can take the sickness away. I’m a necromancer, I can do that.”

  “Oh,” said the chief, and after a pause, “Do you want to talk about her?”

  “No,” Awa lied, wondering just how everyone on the mountain knew—were the goats laughing at her as well as the skeletons and the necromancer and the concubine and Omorose herself and … She stopped herself, knowing such paths were unhealthy, and anyway, who were goats to judge? The bandit chief let her drink in silence, and the unique illness it brought upon her was no more bitter and cramping than her grief. Finally a thought landed on her like a biting fly, and she turned on the bandit.

  “You’ve got your spirit. So you don’t have to do what he says.”

  “No.”

  “Then why didn’t you let me get away that time? Why did you bring me back instead of helping me run?” Awa was not angry, simply very tired.

  “It wasn’t the right time,” he whispered, looking around the desolate, dark plateau. “He can still banish me from my bones with a glance, and his mindless ones are dangerous in numbers. We’ll find a way to get you out of here, Awa.”

  “And what then?” Awa smiled wryly. “You Spaniards aren’t very accommodating to young Moors, in my experience.”

  “Men are not accommodating to strangers anywhere,” said the chief. “Most of them, anyway. I have learned from my wayward life, and I repent. I—”

  “I was only fooling,” said Awa, slurping up more wine. It was growing on her, the sting it brought to her starved palate a better balm than any she had yet found. “We’ve all made mistakes, and I forgave you a long … a long …”

  Where did the grief hide, Awa wondered as it came on her again, ambushing her every time she felt safe, where did it lurk and why could she not vanquish it with the knowledge that she was, if not righteous, innocent in her intentions? She never would have done it, done any of it, if she had not been taken from her village outside Dahomey, if her family had not been murdered before her eyes, if the voice of her mother was not lost to her. She had struggled to forget that voice, had struggled to forget the faces of both her parents, because to remember their faces was to remember the axes cleaving them, to remember their voices was to remember them screaming. Now that she had succeeded in banishing them from her memories she realized her folly but could not call them back, she who could call back the flesh of her beloved somehow incapable of raising a simple thing like the memory of an old face she had kissed countless times, a loving voice she had heard sing countless songs. Awa felt the pain in her chest as palpably as a broken rib, a cracked wrist, a stolen foot, and, biting her lip, she tried to push the hurt away as she had the memory of her parents, the deepest, darkest part of herself relieved to be thinking of anything but Omorose for even a moment.

  While she rubbed her face on her tunic the bandit chief began telling her about his family who lived in Alpujarra, where Moors still lived in peace with Spaniards, about Granada and far Aragon and the forging of one Spain from the pieces once held by Boabdil and Queen Isabella’s family, about the world beyond that even he had not seen. He told her about real wine and honest laughter and the way starshine transformed the plains outside Lorca from shattered desert to seamless dreamscape, the way the sea brought tears to his father’s eyes, the way his brother danced when the zither played just for him. He almost managed to convince her that life could be enjoyable again.

  “When we get away,” Awa said long into the cask and the night, “when we’re free and we’ve burned down his hut and we can go anywhere we want, where do you want to go first? What do you want to do?”

  “I want to go into the ground,” said the bandit chief. “I want to die once more, though I cannot remember what it was like to be properly dead. I have lived enough, and I desire nothing more than to rest.”

  He did not want to make her weep again, but the dead cannot lie.

  XI

  The Soldier and the Witch

  Down the years, and the mountain, Awa stared at the soldier who had freed her as he wept and gibbered and pawed at the damp walls of the cave. Their interaction had been going well until he had noticed the resurrected corpses of his former companions, at which point things went rather downhill. Awa decided there was nothing for it but to be direct.

  “I’m not a witch,” she told Manuel as he cowered in the back of the cave, and he realized he had been whispering that word over and over again, his eyes still fixed on the risen dead and the curtain of rain behind them at the mouth of the grotto. “Or maybe I am. He preferred the term ‘necromancer,’ though I gather there’s no real difference so ‘witch’ if you like. Bruja, warlock, wizard, sorcerer, witch, necromancer, diabolist, all the same—I can raise the dead, Niklaus Manuel Deutsch of Bern, and I can command them to do my will. I can parley with spirits, with demons, and I can kill any man tha
t lives with only my touch.”

  “Fuck,” Manuel squeaked, knowing she spoke the truth.

  Awa took the cooking flesh from her fire and blew on the slick, oozing meat she had cut from her would-be rapist’s thigh. The pot bubbling over the fire contained the mashed-up hand and forearm of one of the corpses that she had prepared before the soldier had awoken, some naïve part of her thinking that it would be as simple as giving him a bone soup to heal his injured wrist, thus repaying his rescue, and then they would go their separate ways. She had not told Niklaus Manuel Deutsch of Bern that, of course, nor anything else—not about her past or Omorose or her current predicament. Nor would she, much as she suddenly wanted to.

  In the three and a half years since she had left the mountain he was the first living person to freely help her, to show her compassion, and now he crouched like a beaten dog, his eyes wide, his nostrils flaring, his trousers wet with piss. Why had she made such a show of raising them? Why had she raised them at all? She might have talked with Niklaus Manuel Deutsch of Bern. They might have passed a day together in conversation, drunk wine and laughed, become fast friends. Instead she had ruined everything. Again.

  The witch set down her meat and all four of the dead men tipped over, Werner teetering for a moment before he pitched onto the fire. The witch cursed and kicked him out of the coals, and Manuel thought he saw the pommel of a sword shining on the belt of one of the fallen Kristobel cousins. He scooted forward the slightest bit and her head snapped around, her eyes dark and her head haloed by the firelight behind her. She looked less like a saint and more like a wrathful angel to the terrified artist.

  “Please,” Manuel said, “I won’t tell anyone. Please.”

  Awa wished he had not said that. Of course he would tell someone, and even if he did not she would have to worry about it for the rest of her days if she let him go, which was far more trouble than it was worth. He had mentioned God to the other men just before releasing her, she had heard him through the sack they had covered her with. That made it a little better, as he presumably would be less frightened of death than the animals she trapped and killed for her dinners.

  Manuel recognized the resignation in her shoulders as she clambered up to a crouch, the weary sigh as keen an indicator as her shouting in his face, I’m going to kill you, Niklaus! I’m going to kill you even if I won’t really enjoy it! His own shoulders had bowed under that same weight many a morning, after all, and did his breath not fall out of him with equal dismay when his prayers were said before battle instead of bed? She was going to kill him because, well, who really knew why witches killed people? Maybe because he knew she was a witch and might tell—

  The witch was reaching out toward him and Manuel kicked her hand away, hardly the dignified march to his Maker he had seen for himself but there it was, and he kicked again as she came closer. He had painted himself a few times, which always made him feel a little bit like an asshole, but now he was suddenly wishing he had written plays or poems instead, about himself, about all this, so he could write some choice final words for himself, something concise and graceful and—

  “Fuck fuck fuck,” Manuel wailed as her fingers stung his ankle like the nettles that had grown beside his great-aunt’s hut, a burning chill racing up his bones and striking his heart, quick and sure as water running down the sluice of the little red millwheel he always passed on his way home to Bern, to his family, and then Niklaus Manuel Deutsch died. His chin hit his chest and he floundered backwards, his legs twitching on the ground as his breath froze on his lips. The artist was just another bland and anonymous corpse, the destiny of many a soldier not blessed with extraordinary luck or skill, and the fate of quite a few with plenty of both.

  Looking down at the body, Awa wondered why she had not killed the man completely. If she did not restore him in a day or two his organs would no longer work properly, but the little death was, for the time being, hardly different than putting him to sleep. Supposedly—she had never applied it to herself and never would if she could help it, her experience with the trick at her tutor’s hand enough to put her off it forever. She returned to her fire and cooling meat, and as she ate she considered whether or not to give back what she had taken.

  Strange, how she had been resigned to die only a few days ago, to abandon the impossible quest that had wasted almost four precious years, yet as soon as men tried to help shuffle her toward her end she fought like a desperate beast, like a woman with everything to lose. She had actually been scared of being raped, of being killed, even though she sometimes thought she deserved both. Had she not given up, resolved to lose something far more precious than her life?

  “Stop,” Awa said as she realized she was muttering to herself again, and after she had eaten she sifted through the bags of her captors. The satchels were carefully emptied one at a time by the fire, sorted through, and then put back precisely as she had found them. She tried to guess which bag went with which dead man, but the first two bags contained identical blankets, bowls, and food, although in the bottom of the second she came across a moldering human thumb. The third bag seemed just as bland, but then her fingers felt a small, smooth oval plank of wood. Carefully removing it, she gasped and then grinned, holding the picture before her. On the flat circle of wood was a mildly smudged black sketch of a nude woman—her breasts pert, her short hair and sharp nose and sly smile all distinct despite the wear the image had received. Awa stared at it for a long time, tilting it this way and that in the firelight, and then she put the treasure aside and returned to the last two bags.

  Awa could tell one of them was different at a glance and so she put it aside, first picking through the other bag with less attention than she had the others, her eyes flitting back to the lumpier satchel as she hurried through her search. Then she wiped her greasy hands on a dead man’s back and carefully uncinched the last bag.

  Awa allowed herself a long, sighing “Oooooh” as she carefully removed one plank after another of smooth pine, some covered in hide to protect the image, others blank, virginal, and she separated the laths into two piles. Continuing her investigation, she found three large, rough cylinders of charcoal wrapped in more of the hide, several small wooden dowels and twine, a handsome little case containing a stylus and a pouch of black powder, and several more personal effects—a tiny doll made of sticks and bright green cloth, and a gold crucifix on a leather thong. There was also a wineskin containing much finer drink than she had thus far found, and after building up the fire she settled in with the wine and the sketches.

  They were unlike anything she had ever seen, or at least remembered—Omorose’s harem must have contained art of some variety, but that was a lifetime ago, and there in the cave Awa doubted the images were equaled anywhere in the world. They were of dead men, mostly, though eyes less versed in the markers of the grave might not have noticed these subtle details in many of the portraits. There was also a larger nude of a woman with curly hair, which Awa did not let herself focus on until last. A few were clearly done using charcoal, and these were much more smudged than the ones he had evidently gone over with some kind of ink.

  Finally she held the image up to the light, the shadows making the woman come alive, and Awa felt her chest tighten at the beauty of the creature, and she bit her lip, keen to allow herself a tiny bit of sport with such a fine inspiration to help her along. Then the image of Omorose shoved herself in the way of Awa’s arousal, and she had a compulsion to cast the plank into the fire. Instantly horrified by the impulse, she quickly covered the sketches back up and stowed them in the pack, save for the small nude she had taken from the other bag—this she wrapped carefully in dry cloth and put with the large satchel she had claimed for herself.

  The sketches decided things for Awa, who now realized why Manuel’s thumbs and forefingers were stained black. She ordered the corpses of Werner, Bernardo, and the Kristobel cousins to their feet, and then had them go out into the rain and dig their own graves, their swords biting
into the gray mud. Once the graves were sufficiently deep she had them crawl inside and, after shedding her clothes and leaving them in the dry cave, she buried them. The rain felt good on her skin, and the fire felt even better when she was finished, and then she brought Manuel back from his little death.

  “Get up,” she ordered, releasing his spirit back into his body. Rather than promptly rising like the undead he rolled on the ground, gasping and clutching his face. Before he could fully recover, Awa launched into her spiel. “You’ve been sick ever since you rescued me, Niklaus Manuel Deutsch of Bern. You’ve had a fever and told me you saw dead men and that I was really a witch, but I’m not. You seemed to see a lot of things that did not really happen. This happens to men with fevers. Do you still have a fever, Niklaus Manuel Deutsch of Bern?”

  “Blart,” said Manuel, vomiting all over himself.

  “You’re still sick,” Awa observed.

  “You killed me,” Manuel groaned, his headache distracting him from any potential, and indeed advisable, duplicity in the matter. “My heart stopped, I heard it. Felt it. You looked through the gear, and took them outside. The dead—”

  Manuel dry-heaved and Awa licked her lips, watching him. She had forgotten that when her tutor had applied the little death to her she had been perfectly conscious the entire time. That was a problem. She approached him again.

  “Saved you,” Manuel panted, strings of bile dangling from his chin like an old man’s last few beard hairs. “I fucking saved you! Please!”

  Awa reached toward him again, and he drew back with a whine. She stopped, her fingers still stretching out toward him, and then closed her hand into a fist. They could talk whether he was alive or dead, and it occurred to her that if she killed him again she could raise his corpse and interrogate it as to Manuel’s character, especially in regard to his opinion of witches. But she did not know if by doing so she would actually kill him instead of giving him the little death—could those whose spirits were not fully removed from their bodies be raised as mindless ones? The question certainly bore looking into.