The Enterprise of Death

by Jesse Bullington

  With her eyes closed, Awa could not see if they all burst from the hard earth at once or if they had emerged one at a time and converged in the darkness, gathering like rumor, until their numbers were large enough to move. All she knew was that the crushing weight on her stomach and the fetid wind in her face were suddenly snatched away, and the only sounds she heard above her own wheezing whine and the monster’s surprised yelp were the clattering of bone on bone, of rot-greased limbs sliding around hollow sockets. She could not believe it but her ears were always the most honest of her senses, and so she opened her eyes.

  Awa could not tell how many there were, the canine creature thrashing on the ground as the skeletons clawed and clubbed and kicked and beat it, and as it threw half a dozen off and gained its feet three bonemen pounced onto its back and rode it through the cemetery, their fingers wrenching out clods of meat and fur that they threw into the snowy air like wet confetti. The beast was screaming with that little girl’s scream, but to Awa’s dismay it reached the wall of the churchyard and bounded over it, disappearing into the night with its undead riders still in tow. Awa heard it scream for a long time, its voice echoing down the canyon as she looked around for the necromancer who had saved her. She was still alone, save for the thirty or forty animate corpses staring at her, but she could not get to her feet to see if her savior was on the other side of the mausoleum.

  Five of the walking dead quickly came to her and hoisted her up, as careful as she would have been herself to keep the splintered hoof from brushing the ground, and as they slowly turned her around she saw nothing but the empty cemetery. Instead of an unbroken white churchyard Awa saw black pits yawning all around her, several tombstones tipped over, and the gory trail the monster had left as it fled, bloody clumps of its hide littering even the far edges of the grounds. Glancing toward the previously dark town she saw it was blazing with light, but no brave souls had yet dared investigate the noisy disturbance in the cemetery. Through her shock Awa took note of the dead men holding her aloft, and realized who had saved her.

  Awa had not thought herself so powerful—she had always dug up the bodies herself before trying to raise them, even if she did employ their help in refilling their own graves. Now the militia of the undead that she had conjured all stared at her, some from oozing sockets and others from dry skulls, and Awa smiled weakly at them. She had vowed not to raise the mindless ones, not to use the dead without the permission of their spirits, but this seemed like a reasonable exception. She did not know how much time she had before the villagers found their courage and came with lanterns and cudgels, and so she bade her animate palanquin lower her onto a stone cross marker to supervise the reinterment.

  “Someone find my knife,” she tried to say, but only a little blood came out. The monster had nearly killed her, she realized, and she would need a volunteer or two to help get her through. As she mused how to go about it, one of the bonier fellows —no, a woman, Awa saw by the pelvis—returned with her dagger and, she saw, the disguising string that had come loose from her ankle when the creature bit her. Awa shook her head in bemusement. Just to make sure she was correct she had the woman do a little jig, and Awa smiled through her hurt. She did not even need to speak aloud for them to hear—how useful was that?

  There were always a few whose spirits had not quit their bones for what other worlds await the dead, perhaps those with unfinished business in the mortal realm, and Awa singled out the three corpses present whose spirits clung to their flesh like a drowning sailor to driftwood. They were still mindless, of course, as the spirits could not actually reenter their old homes without her help, and so help them she did after ordering the rest of the mindless ones to bury each other.

  There was a recently deceased man, his skin barely blackened by the grave, and a man and a woman with less skin between them than Awa had on her two thumbs. Once the restored spirits had stopped marveling at the event, all three faced Awa. She would have returned their polite bows had her injuries not crippled her.

  “I am in your debt,” said the freshest of the dead. “That monster had dug me up and would have eaten my body as surely as he ate the dozen before me if you had not interrupted him. He would eat one of us, sing his song, and eat another, and I would have been next.”

  “Why care?” Awa managed. “You’re dead.”

  “He ate them, bones and all, and if he had devoured me I would not have been able to meet you, and ask the boon I shall now beg.”

  Awa was accustomed to the dead making little sense to the living, and so she simply nodded.

  “My request is a simple one—I promised my heart to the sea, and had no intention of dying, and being buried, anywhere but within her. I was born on the coast, but not long ago life pushed me far from her, and fate has made a liar of me. I beg that you take this heart of mine with you on your travels, and before it rots away to nothing cast it into my beloved.”

  “The rest?” Awa said with a wince. “Ribs, say? Legs, say?”

  “The rest?” The corpse took a step back. “Well, the rest could just …”

  “You can hear as well as I what she thinks, what she needs,” said the woman’s skeleton, both she and the other old corpse having salvaged operative tongues from their mindless neighbors before they had fully reburied themselves.

  “Yes,” said the male skeleton, clapping his finger bones on the fresh corpse’s shoulder. “The hyena would’ve eaten you anyway. If it’s only your heart you care about, where’s the harm in helping our mistress?”

  “No harm, I suppose.” The dead man smiled nervously at Awa. “Use of me what you will, mistress, though I beg you remove me first so I do not feel it.”

  “Come,” said Awa. “Come and rest.”

  The dead man knelt as if in prayer before Awa, who still half sat, half leaned on the tombstone. Awa gently pushed his spirit out of his bones, then went to work with her knife. His heart was already well on its way to putrescence, but Awa wagered that with the help of the sun spirits that drifted down even in cruelest winter she could dry it enough to last the duration of a trip to the ocean. She was surprised to see that the man’s spirit had not drifted away to wherever they went, nor had it stayed in his skull, but had somehow come loose and settled in the wet lump of muscle Awa held in her hand.

  “Mistress?” the male skeleton said quietly but firmly, shifting from one foot to the other as though he were a child in bad need of a piss. “Ah, mistress? Mistresssss?”

  “Yes?” Awa was intent on her task, wrapping the dead man’s heart in the wet rags rotting to his skin.

  “Ah, lights? Lights.”

  “What?” Awa looked up.

  “The village is coming,” the female skeleton said. “Let us away.”

  “But I haven’t heard your requests yet,” said Awa. “How will I know—”

  “Let us away,” the dead woman repeated. “Hurry.”

  “Right,” said Awa, trying to get up and falling from her seat into the snow. She felt bones closing around her, low voices murmuring to one another how best to handle her. Then she felt them raise her off the ground and she cried out despite herself —she hurt so much she knew she must be dying. They moved very quickly, the two skeletons carrying her while the mindless body of the man whose heart she held in her hand staggered after them. Once they cleared the wall of the cemetery and the harvest moon cleared the wall of the canyon the night became very dark indeed.

  XXVII

  The High Cost of Living

  “You called it a hyena,” Awa asked Johan, the male skeleton. “How do you know that’s what the monster was?”

  Awa had not heard of hyenas from her tutor, though well he might have warned his pupil against that bane of grave and grave robber alike. Her parents had cautioned her of them when she was a child, though she had forgotten that particular boogeyman until the skeleton had used the term. The hyena had come as close to killing her as even her tutor had managed, and she was horrified to recall that in her panic sh
e had so freely given it her name. Even after consuming all the requisite pieces of the heartless dead man Awa found herself unable to move from the cave she had found without the assistance of her two skeletal companions—they had only that night carried off a goat from a nearby village, the hoof now boiling down for Awa to consume.

  “My line o work meant being appraised’ve mythical whatsits,” said Johan, putting his finger bones in the bubbling pot and giving the hoof a squeeze to see how it was softening. The rest of the creature smoked on spits strategically balanced around the stewpot, and the skeleton removed his hand and blew on the steaming bones. “Not so mythical, I suppose, but there it is. Hyena. Got magic rocks in his head, too, shame you didn’t catch’em.”

  “Magic rocks?” Ysabel, the female skeleton, glanced at Awa.

  “Well, it’s not so credible like magic string that hides a hoof, or, you know, resurrecting the dead like our names is Lazarus, I’ll give you fair,” said Johan. “But Philosopher’s Stone in the ol’ eyeball mightn’t be so far-fetched.”

  “And what was your line of work?” asked Ysabel. “I’m sure our mistress is curious.”

  “Awa,” said she, “please, I’m not your mistress. Just call me—”

  “Mistress wants to know, she’ll ask,” said Johan. “Think your hoof’s about ready, if—”

  “Does graverobbing sound like a business to you, mistress?” Ysabel asked Awa, who was having a time of it adjusting to voices outside her own addressing her on a regular basis.

  “That,” said Johan, “is pure shit. Pure shit. I look like I got a beard to you?”

  Without any skin or musculature it was difficult to tell if he was genuinely upset or only joking, and he and the woman bickered on as Awa closed her eyes and listened. They had stayed with her for days now and neither had volunteered why they wanted to return to life, and if they kept this noise up much longer Awa would demand a damn good reason or banish them back to death. The thought, harsh though it surely was, curled her lips into a smile that caught the attention of her companions.

  “Course, she don’t mind you being a graverobber,” said Ysabel, and, opening her eyes, Awa saw they were both staring at her.

  “Heard’ve resurrection men afore,” said Johan. “But didn’t think they meant nothing like her.”

  “Look,” said Awa, the pain in her leg faded to the point that holding a thought long enough to voice it was easy, if not exactly pleasurable. “I gather you both have your reasons for wanting to come back …”

  “Her first,” said Johan, pointing at Ysabel.

  “Now, how’s that fair?” protested Ysabel. “He should have to go first for trying to do me like that!”

  “Out with it, Johan,” said Awa. “What do you want?”

  “I want to be a relic,” said he, clapping his hand over his jawbone as soon as the words left it.

  “You what?” asked Awa as Ysabel laughed and laughed, her teeth chattering.

  “I want,” Johan repeated slowly, “to be a relic. I don’t expect it’s in your powers to make me one official-like, but I thought you might be able to, you know, pull a switcheroo?”

  “What?” Awa squinted at the skeleton, as though she might see what he was about if only it were not so smoky beside the fire.

  “It’s like this,” Johan explained, making an obscene gesture at the still chortling Ysabel. “I was something like an entrepreneur, made my coin selling relics and all.”

  “Relics?” Awa had not wanted a drink so badly in a very long time. “What kind of relics?”

  “The regular kind?” Johan rubbed his palms together.

  “The regular kind are made’ve saints, not random old bits of beasts, you cheat!” said Ysabel.

  “Says you!” shouted Johan. “I was in the business long enough to set you straight there, and anyone else! When they weren’t stealing’em from one another they were making their own.”

  “Who were stealing what?” asked Awa.

  “Priests and all, and men what worked for’em,” said Johan, clearly pleased that she had taken an interest. “Like me. I’ll allow I went freelance after a time, but I started off legit as the rest. I was one o the boys what got the saints out’ve Stantinople when we crusaded it.”

  “He was slinging chicken bones, trying to pass them off as old Popes!” said Ysabel. “I took pity on him getting run off by the priest, and the thankless fraud got me killed for my trouble.”

  “Harsh, Ysabel, very harsh.” Johan crossed his arms. “So much for personal responsibility, eh? And the few times I didn’t have real bones with me they was pigs’, not chickens’, so that’s slander atop o slander.”

  “Listen,” said Awa, rubbing her temples. “You can’t lie, so let’s go from the beginning. Starting with you, Johan. You were helping people leave Constantinople?”

  “Yessss?” Johan fidgeted. “Well, alright, yes and no. See, people what do real right by God get turned into saints, and the bones them saints leave behind is powerful holy. So over the years Stantinople buys up a load o these saint bones, relics is what they is, and the people pilgrimaged there to pray. And when Constanty was being sacked on direct orders o the Pope, well, my brothers and some others who was there decided to help out this abbot was reclaiming the relics. So we nicked some bones and took’em back to France and all, to where the bones, relics, right, where the relics belonged.”

  “Why did they belong in France instead of Constantinople?” asked Awa.

  “Cause the priests what paid us for the bones told us so,” said Johan with a shrug. “Not being a priest myself, I couldn’t say. But belong they did—saints wouldn’t let no one move their bones otherwise. Furitive sacrum, they call it.”

  “And what happened after that?” said Awa.

  “I seen the coin I made off one set o bones, so I thought why not make a little more? I, ah …” The words started falling out, to Johan’s obvious dismay and Ysabel’s delight. “A man died on the way home with the relics so I cut off his hand. After, right, after, but I cut it off and cleaned the meat and little white ropes and all and got the bones out, and ah, rubbed’em with sand and filth and all, and got’em cracked a bit, and traded ol’ Saint James a left for a left. So after we got the coin in France I took the show to the road, selling his finger bones.”

  “Oh,” said Awa. “Selling them to other priests?”

  “Exactly! And the random noble what’d stay at the sort o inns I did. Got myself a monk robe, made a box for the bones, and that was that. Thing is, not everyone believed I was the last brother o this order or that trying to find a proper reliquary for beloved James’s hand in exchange for some funds to save the abbey. Some uncharitable souls, and I’m talking clergy’s well as gentry here, didn’t believe the hand was even his.”

  “Imagine that!” said Ysabel. “I wish you’d seen him with his skin on, mistress, the old villain looked like Reynard himself, red as the devil and twice as shifty.”

  “I was handsome, is what she’s getting at,” said Johan.

  “Is that so?” Now Ysabel crossed her arms.

  “Sooo.” Johan turned back to Awa. “You see where my mind started going next?”

  “I do?”

  “You don’t.” Johan sighed.

  “Sinning don’t come natural as breathing to some folk,” said Ysabel. “He starts thinking if those who buy his relics take it on faith they’re real, maybe like-minded honest souls’ll take it on faith any old bones a priest tells them is holy is just as holy as the real relics, even if they come from any old barrow. That’s what you were thinking, wasn’t it? Exploit them who believe a priest?”

  “Less eloquent than I would’ve put it,” said Johan. “But true for the coarseness.”

  “Coarse, am I? Well, that’s a touch coarser yourself than last you commented on my texture, you—”

  “Ysabel,” said Awa. “I think I understand what Johan was up to. Now, what happened when you met him?”

  “I was passing by when t
he old priest run this fox off, and I took pity on him, being far from in that particular rooster’s good graces myself. I come down from a Waldensian upbringing and my husband of course tells the priest, who’s none too fond to hear it, especially with me tending to women up at my place without his holy ears hearing the specifics. So I invited this cheat back to my house, which was a ways out of town, so I thought none would be the wiser of me taking in a scrawny ne’er-do-well out of the goodness of my heart.”

  “Goodness of your heart,” said Johan, “or a lusty thought to poach my eel and eggs? We’ll get the truth out you yet!”

  Ysabel made a low groan, then said, “ … I thought him fair for being a rascal, and my husband had moved back in with his mother the next town over, and he and I, my husband, I mean, we were about done with each other, or at least I was done with him and … I thought I might get something from the ginger goat.”

  “And get it she did!” said Johan, then ducked as Ysabel threw a stone at him.

  “So he lays his dirty bag of bones out on my table, and starts laying in his lies as we eat, and the whole time he’s coming off fishier and fishier, cause I’m country but I’m not stupid, and finally I tell him if he’s sport we might have a game to play, if only to shut him up. So in we get to it, his bone the shakiest of the lot—”

  “Hey! No call—”

  “And my husband decides this is the time to get the priest’s help in patching things up twixt me and him, so up they come as I’m doing the same, and that’s that,” said Ysabel.

  “That it was.” Johan nodded. “Got myself done in for doing an old woman a favor.”

  “Favor? Old?” Ysabel was feeling on the ground for another rock.

  “What do you mean, that was that?” asked Awa. “The priest and your husband discovered you? Then what?”