The Enterprise of Death

by Jesse Bullington

  “And my spirit? What will happen to my spirit?”

  “When the curse dissipates your spirit will be naked and vulnerable, and no wards will keep him from it. He will devour it, and any scraps he leaves will be but an extension of his will.”

  “Oh.” Awa sat down on the glacier. “Oh.”

  So after all she had weathered he would return in a decade, steal her body, and obliterate her soul. She often lusted after an end of consciousness, an absence of memory and pain, but he had convinced her it was not possible, that even were she to have her own skull split he would still find a way to draw back her spirit. That there was a way to achieve that precious oblivion did not bring her comfort, however, only more misery. Things we want often seem sweeter until they become attainable.

  “I don’t want him to be happy,” Awa said to herself as much as to Gisela’s corpse. “I want him to be disappointed. If I kill myself, if I have my head crushed, will he be able to find a new body? Will he be able to call back my spirit?”

  “I do not know,” said the corpse. “He told me only what he told me. I do know that when he wore his skin he could call back the spirits of the dead that had no bones at all.”

  “Oh,” said Awa, and sat some more, her legs and bottom becoming as stiff and cold as her feet. As she ruminated on her unhappy circumstances, she had Gisela’s corpse climb down to the low meadows and retrieve an ibex from its pen, the fingerless horror snapping the animal’s neck and returning with it wrapped around her shoulders. Awa continued to brood, and eventually looked up at the spirit-shrouded corpse. “Is there a way to stop him?”

  “He told me there was,” said the corpse. “He instructed me to tell you, if you found me and asked that question. He said that if you take one hundred children, and you kill those one hundred children using the knife he gave you, then your curse will be lifted and he will never trouble you again.”

  Awa nodded glumly. “He knew I would find you.”

  “He told me you were clever but stupid,” said the concubine.

  “Is there any other way to break the curse? Any at all?”

  “If there is, I do not know it.”

  “Oh.” But Awa did not think long before a different, welcome thought occurred to her, one that shone its light through her darkened spirit and brought blooms of hope to her neglected inner plot. “His book wasn’t on the mantel, it wasn’t there! His book might have a way to take it off!”

  “It might,” agreed Gisela’s corpse.

  “Did he take it with him? Do you know if he took it with him? I didn’t see it, I didn’t see him take it!”

  “He could not take anything with him. He is a creature of aether now, and cannot take such things as are made of more than spirit.”

  “He’s hidden it, then, like he hid you!”

  “Yes.”

  “Where?!” Awa leaned closer and took Gisela’s slippery, fingerless hands in her own cold-cramped palms. “Where has he hidden it?”

  “I do not know—”

  “Shit!”

  “— where it is hidden, but I do know he sent it away with his familiar spirits, demons made of the high mountain winds.”

  “Oh,” said Awa, then seized on a discrepancy. “But you said beings of spirit could not take physical items with them!”

  “No,” corrected the corpse, “I said that he is a creature of aether now, and so he is and so he cannot move his book, nor otherwise manifest himself beyond the absence of life he has become—he might smother a small bird by settling upon it, but little else is possible until he again dons flesh. His familiars are made of wind, real wind, and as such they can blow the breeze about your hair or swirl the snow around my grave or even, if several muster their strength, take a book from one place and put it somewhere else. I do not know if he intended me to see or not, but these eyes saw his familiars take the book and fly away with it. But I do not know where they have taken it.”

  “How will I find it then?!” Awa cried. “It’s gone forever!”

  “It has your blood inside it,” said the corpse, arresting the fit Awa was on the verge of suffering. She had not intended it as a question but was not very well going to tell the corpse that. “He took a page of flesh from his back, and prepared it, and when he inscribed the inside of your skin he also added a new page to his book, and wrote upon it using your blood. This is how his art is crafted: your blood on his skin to add a new page to his book, his blood on your skin to bestow his curse. Yet your blood is just that, and if you draw near enough your stolen blood will cry out to you, if you listen. This will help you find the book.”

  “Oh!” This news cheered Awa far more than it had any right to. “And if I find the book I can remove the curse!”

  “I do not know.”

  “But it might!”

  “Yes,” said the concubine. “It might.”

  “Thank you!” Awa threw her arms around the ice-coated corpse, making Gisela’s spirit squeal faintly. “Thank you thank you!”

  Let there be hope, then. It scared her almost more than there being no hope at all, to have such an impossibly small chance, such a mean and tiny scrap of hope, but hope she did. She would find the book, and she would break the curse, and even if he killed her, even if he found another way, even if all were for naught, she would have this delicious warmth, this knowledge that she could choose. She had no options before, she knew that now, that she had been as weak and open to suggestion as the mindless bonemen, but at this moment she had the choice of whether she would wait hopelessly for his return or whether she would work to thwart him. To those spoiled on countless options and fattened on limitless choices such a selection might appear to be no choice at all, but there on the mountaintop Awa wept at the luxury.

  “Thank you,” said Awa, wiping her face on her tunic. “Oh, thank you so much.”

  The spirit of Gisela buzzed around her vacant, lolling head, the animated body waiting for another question. None came.

  “Gisela.” Awa addressed the spirit as much as the body, and it quieted its droning. “Lie back down in your grave.”

  The corpse obeyed her, and as soon as it lay flat in its grave of ice Awa shoved Gisela’s spirit back into her desiccated head. Her putrid eyelids fluttered, and the last thing the restored spirit saw was a dagger plummeting into her eye. The sensation of the skull splintering inward as the blade sunk in delighted Awa, but then she doubled over and gagged, wondering what had happened to her and how she might stop herself from ever again acting so wicked, from ever again taking pleasure in such evil sport.

  The concubine had it coming, Awa thought as she wound her way across the glacier back to her hut, the evening sky ablaze around her, and she almost convinced herself she was the only victim atop the mountain. Then she reached her hovel and saw the left wall of her hut, Omorose’s tomb, and burst into tears. That night she soaked the lighter wool in ibex blood but did not eat the creature’s flesh, instead smoking it for later consumption and eating the pile of brown grass she had collected until she threw up again. When the last of the chestnut wood had burned away and the half-smoked meat lay piled outside her door she slept with her back to Omorose’s crypt and hoped for their future together.

  The next day the dyed wool dried and she knit by starlight, adopting the necromancer’s nocturnal schedule in preparation of her journey to the world below. Safer to travel at night, he had told her many times, and here at least she believed him. Days later she had several sets of black and rust-red striped leggings, and a coarse black cloak, and a new goatskin tunic, and then it was time to see if Omorose would behave herself.

  She would not, although at first she did seem calmer. Then the reason for her lack of aggression became apparent: “Girl, I’m trying very hard to pick up a rock to brain you, but my body won’t listen. What have you done to me?”

  Awa had awoken early and brought her mistress outside just before sunset, and as the sun sank between the peaks like the lidless, bloody eye of a dying beast, Aw
a shook her head, disappointed but, she found, hardly surprised. “He’s cursed me, Omorose, so that the dead cannot harm me.”

  “Isn’t that a tragedy,” said Omorose, and she knelt and picked up a rock. Awa watched her closely, and saw the exposed musculature tighten around the stone, Omorose’s entire arm going rigid. She turned and tossed the stone over the cliff. “Poor little ape, protected yet again by her beloved daddy.”

  “Don’t,” said Awa, her tongue feeling as fat and stupid as Omorose insisted the rest of her was. “Please, Omorose, don’t. I know what I did to you and—”

  “You’re sorry?” Omorose said sarcastically. “Apology accepted, beast, just as soon as you fling yourself off that cliff.”

  “I won’t,” Awa said quietly, relieved she had not been asked to do so the first time she had returned Omorose’s soul to its body. She would have, then. Probably.

  “Oh well,” said Omorose. “Then why don’t you get on with raping me or whatever you’re going to do?”

  “I’m not.” Awa felt the tightness wrap around her throat, as though her mistress were choking her. “I’ll never touch you again. I, I found a way to make it so you’ll be alright, so you can be normal. So we can be even.”

  The words sounded so foolish that Awa could not blame Omorose for the incredulous look on her raw, frostburned face. Taking out the ring the necromancer had given her, she offered it to Omorose. The undead horror blinked at it and said, “Am I supposed to be touched that my violator made me a present?”

  “I didn’t.” Awa swallowed, resisting the urge to throw it over the cliff and send Omorose hurtling after it. “It’s, it was his. It will make you … normal.”

  “Normal?” Omorose plucked the ring from Awa’s palm and slid it on. “You mean not so much rotten meat when you say normal, beast?”

  “Yes,” Awa whispered, looking away. “Focus on how you would like to appear. Now. But if you call me beast again I’ll ruin you, understand? I’ll take you apart and—”

  “Oh!” said Omorose, and looking back at her, Awa echoed the sentiment. The young Egyptian woman looked even more delicate and lovely than she had in life, and her tattered, stained shroud was replaced with a lovely blue-and-green silken abaya embroidered with tiny trees and flowers. She took Awa’s heart yet again as she admired herself, and for a moment she seemed to forget her antipathy as she gazed at her own flawless hand. “Am I … is the rest of me so fair?”

  Awa nodded and, finding her limbs slightly more obedient than her mouth, retrieved the clothes she had made Omorose and offered them next. Glancing at them, Omorose sneered. “What use have I for that trash? My garments are made of far finer stuff, are they not?”

  Awa nodded again, and striking a low bow, managed, “I would use the ring to make myself inconspicuous on the road, but I have done you a great wrong and don’t know a better means of making amends. Please forgive me, my lady. Please. All I have is yours, and I would give you my life if I did not need it to better serve you.”

  Omorose made a low sob, and Awa kept her head low so her mistress could not see her smile. She had finally forgiven Awa, or if not that, then at least realized that her servant was contrite. Awa would be washed clean in the tears of Omorose, and no longer need blame herself.

  Except Omorose was not crying. As her mistress laughed and laughed, Awa supplied the tears she felt the occasion deserved, and only when the dry chuckles faded with the light did Awa daub her eyes with the rejected tunic she held clutched in both hands. Then Omorose demanded she explain what had transpired to allow her to leave the mountain, and with a wondrous ring to boot. Awa told her, in as clipped and dead a tone as the mindless ones giving their answers to any who asked.

  “Well, beast,” Omorose said when Awa had concluded, the night fully around them. “I have no use for lizard eggs, and as I cannot bury it in your wretched breast I do not want your dagger, either. I do want his book, though, and I will find it, and I will break your curse.”

  The last words obliterated the first, and that small patch of hope in Awa’s breast grew larger and wilder, her palms damp, her mouth dry. “Together we’ll find it, and once the curse is gone I’ll find a way to make you all better. All better, I swear!”

  “Once the curse is off I’ll carve out your eyes and tongue and cunt and every other thing that gives you joy,” Omorose snarled, and before Awa could draw back in hurt or lash out in anger her mistress had spun away and was dashing across the glacier. Then Awa’s indignation trumped her naïve surprise, and she pushed Omorose’s soul out of her fleeing body.

  Except Omorose was already too far away, and moving farther with every instant. Appreciating just what she had done, and finally dispensing once and for all with her unrealistically charitable opinion of her beloved, she scrambled up in pursuit lest Omorose get away and make good on her threat. Awa could outrun anything on the mountain, and—her right leg was asleep and she tripped, falling in the snow.

  Crying out in frustration, she got up and hobbled after Omorose, but by the time she had shaken the limb awake her reanimated mistress was gone, swallowed by the night mountains as neatly as Awa’s tutor would swallow her spirit if she did not find his book, and find it before Omorose. Chastising herself, Awa returned to her hut and changed into the clothes she had made for Omorose. They fit perfectly, given that she had knit them based on her own proportions, and putting the dagger, the box of salamander eggs, the smoked meat, her blanket, and extra clothes into her leather bag, Awa turned her back on the only home she now remembered.

  XIV

  The Long Walk to Golgatha

  Two individuals of the opposite sex will, if forced to go on a journey together, fall in love. Often begrudgingly, and with a great deal of reluctance by at least one of the parties, to be sure, but love will fall as surely as night after day. In the unlikely event that one of the two is homosexual, asexual, already in a loving relationship, or otherwise disinclined from romancing their traveling companion, love will fall all the harder, like cannon fire upon a charging cavalry; indeed, the less likely the two are to fall in love naturally, the more certain it is that the sojourn will bring them together.

  Somehow, preposterous though it may sound, Awa and Manuel did not fall in love on their journey together, in spite of the wife at home who adored Manuel, in spite of Awa’s lack of sexual interest in men, in spite of their mismatched personalities, and in spite of their growing and mutual fondness for one another. The best they could muster was a lessening of fear on Manuel’s part and the honest—if painfully disinterested—observation on Awa’s that Manuel was not so bad-looking, and that was only observed as the result of some self-deprecating jibe the artist had made about his own downward-angling nose. Pathetic.

  The more time Manuel spent with Awa, though, the more he wanted to draw her—to sketch and then paint her likeness, and not upon wooden boards but canvases and abbey walls. Her full lips contrasted her hard cheeks in a splendid fashion, and the bulging muscles in her arms and legs endowed her with a body reminiscent of Minerva, tempting to an artist who had spent so long paying tribute to Venus-like figures. She was, in fact, just as strong as he, yet lacking the androgynous looks that characterized the few other women he had met who carried a sword instead of a spindle, and in her unorthodox and scarred fashion she represented the ideal model.

  She would have none of it, at first, but eventually he wore her down with the same disarming charm he hoped would convince von Stein not to have him killed once he returned to the front and reported his mission a failure. He had stood over Awa for a long time the night before they set out on their journey together, the weight of the iron burdening hand and heart alike as he debated with himself whether or not to bind the witch. Part of what it had come down to was, unflattering a light though it may shine on Manuel’s soul, her obvious fondness for his work—had she been a critic that would have made things much easier.

  There were other factors, of course. The way she clung to the little piece o
f smut Bernardo had commissioned as she slept, for one, so much like the way Manuel’s niece had held on to the doll he had made her when she was young, the doll she insisted he take with him for luck, the doll he had seen the witch remove from his bag, hold as reverently as a relic, and then carefully return to his bag as he lay dead on the floor of the cave, watching.

  Manuel had wondered if she would struggle as he put the chains on her, if she would resist the bag and the blindfold, both of which would be necessary. He couldn’t very well look at her after that, nor have her look at him. He didn’t think she would fight him.

  Fuck that, and fuck him for even thinking it.

  Manuel the martyr, he had thought as he envisioned himself beheaded like John the Baptist or pierced with arrows like Sebastian or dunked in tar like … like … Manuel’s memory for the gory ends of God’s servants failed him there due to the stress of the moment, but his imagination helpfully supplied a picture of all three grisly ends happening to him at once, von Stein cackling, his family shrieking, but then he remembered Awa’s expression when she had asked him if he was living as God would want, or however she had put it, and that was that. Manuel the martyr and the nameless witch, fast friends and road partners. Ludicrous.

  Awa could not believe she had a living friend, and sometimes found herself victim to giggling fits to match the one Manuel had suffered in the cave. He was conceited, incredibly conceited, and thought he knew everything, and he came off as condescending even when he was obviously trying not to, but still. A friend, a breathing friend who knew she was a necromancer yet still shared a wineskin with her. Ludicrous.

  “You seem like a decent girl,” Manuel said once she had, to some extent, stopped frightening the ever-loving shit out of him. “So why traffic with the devil?”

  “I’m a woman,” Awa snorted. “And I’ve never dealt with your anti-god, if he even exists.”

  “But the raising of the dead is an evil act, rife with—”