Medicine for the Dead

by Arianne Thompson

  By the time Día arrived at the Azahi’s house, her temper had cooled to a firm, weighty resolve. She would present him with the facts, and receive his wisdom.

  Unfortunately, the stick lying tilted across the foot of his door-frame said otherwise. It said that the occupant was not at home, or not receiving visitors.

  Día tapped her parasol’s long wooden shaft absently against her shoulder, and considered the stick. She felt that an exception probably ought to be made for cases of spontaneous resurrection. Surely Halfwick had been returned for some greater purpose. Surely it was not an accident that God had made his miracle manifest at this precise day and hour. How silly, how crass would one have to be to hold up His will for the sake of a long morning lie-in?

  Día’s free hand clasped the beads that hung from her belt, numbering the commandments in nervous moral limbo.

  Then she turned and hurried back up the street, backtracking just slightly on the path of virtue as she headed for an unpleasant compromise.

  IT HAD NEVER been an especially welcoming door – at least not within Día’s lifetime. In her earliest recollections, it had stood open on hot days like this one, affording passers-by a good view of the soles of Sheriff Tuckerson’s boots, which he’d kept reliably propped up on the desk. But when he was away, the man in the cell – and there was almost always a man in the cell – would spit or shout or say horrible things when she passed, or sometimes just beg her to do him a favor. Día never stopped long enough to learn what the favors were.

  The cell was still there, as were the door, the desk, and the succession of disagreeable men. Only the boots had changed.

  Nowadays, their owner took a perverse delight in discomfiting visitors. The door never stood open, not even on the hottest days, and there was no stick provided. For Día, who was old enough to remember the Eadan custom of knocking, this was no great impediment. But native visitors – most of whom would not barbarously raise a fist to the door except to invite the occupant to immediate violence – would feel compelled to call out, like a street vendor announcing their wares, or else fetch their own stick, like a dog.

  Today, as usual, there was no stick.

  But there was a dog.

  This was not surprising. Before it was Island Town, this place had been called Sixes. Before that, it was an unpeopled island, sacred to the Ara-Naure and their divine parent, U’ru, the Dog Lady. U’ru and the Ara-Naure were long gone, but a few dogs still congregated here, and feeding them was said to bring good luck.

  This particular specimen was ordinary enough: a middling-sized brown one, prick-eared and curly-tailed. It – she – sat up at Día’s approach and wagged.

  And Día, who rarely received welcomes even half so warm, did not fail to reciprocate. “Hello, Mother Dog,” she said in Marín. “Have you come to call on the Second Man too?”

  From inside the house, there was a faint wooden creak.

  Día knelt down and hugged her updrawn knees. “Would you forgive me if I asked to go in before you?” she continued, louder than strictly necessary. “I wouldn’t otherwise be so forward, but it’s an extraordinarily urgent case, and I know the Second Man will not want to lose even one moment by keeping the two of us waiting out here like an unwanted pair of –”

  She was interrupted by five heavy footsteps on the floorboards, the rough flinging-open of the door, and one surly, weary, “WHAT?”

  Día and the dog looked up.

  The Second Man of Island Town was not, strictly speaking, a man – though not for any dearth of masculinity on her part. In the present moment, she expressed herself not so much by the men’s clothing she wore, or her rough-cut hair, or even that wide-brimmed rancher’s hat she was never seen without, but by the sincere irritation with which she glowered down at her visitors, and waited for them to justify their presence.

  The dog immediately bounded up and greeted her with wagging, panting enthusiasm. “Uh, uh, uh...”

  Twoblood answered with a hard shove of her knee.

  Día rose to present her case with somewhat more dignity. “I need to speak with the Azahi, please. Do you know if he’s at home?”

  Twoblood pulled the door closed behind her and leaned against its frame, one hand resting above the holstered pistol at her hip. “And what morsel is he to offer the Starving God today?”

  Día had been ten years old when Twoblood first came to Island Town. She had been frightening then: tall and strange and full of contradictions. Female, but denying all femininity. Native, but with the telltale marks of bastardy freckling her face and curling her hair. Lovoka, at least to judge by her accent and those wolfish fangs in her mouth, but apparently without any family to claim her.

  She was still all of those things, but considerably less frightening now. Día had long since grown to match her height, and to make allowances for her temperament. And where the more troublesome visitors to Island Town were concerned, the two of them made quite the pair: Twoblood policed the living, and Día buried the dead.

  And now – just now, today – Día was beginning to suspect that she’d had the better end of the deal all along. “I need to speak with him about how to dispose of Mister Halfwick.” A coarse expression of the truth if there ever was one.

  Twoblood snorted. “And what is there to be decided about that? Are the clay fields too good for him? Has he demanded special accommodation? A few sacrificial goats, perhaps a ship lit on fire and –”

  “Oh, let her in!”

  The voice was muffled through the door, but unmistakable. Día all but sighed in relief. God’s work had not been delayed more than ten minutes at the most, then – surely well within the acceptable margin for miracles.

  Twoblood’s glower returned. She pushed open the door and tromped back inside. The dog followed likewise, leaving Día to prop her parasol against the house wall, and bring up the rear.

  The Azahi, more properly called the First Man of Island Town, was exactly that. Presently, he was seated at Twoblood’s desk, poring over a ledger. He’d laid his marks of office aside – a bright, conspicuous pile of jewelry now piled on the corner of the desk – and in this present moment, appeared as nothing but a middle-aged bureaucrat struggling to catch up on paperwork.

  But he did look up, his golden eyes creasing at the corners as he smiled at her. “Good morning,” he said in Ardish, and then in Marín: “Are you coming to see us?”

  This latter greeting was more modern, and one that Día was always glad to receive. Yes, it was nice to hear the old words and customs every now and again, but that world was gone – and she wanted very much to be included in the new one. “Yes, First, with apologies for my forwardness.” If he was using Twoblood to shield himself from visitors, it was because he wished to work undisturbed, but could not bring himself to bar them entirely. Today, Día would take glad advantage of his guilty conscience. “I would ask for just a moment of your time. May we speak privately?”

  The Azahi, who had already bookmarked the page with his pencil and folded the ledger over, glanced up. But it was Twoblood who spoke up first – already offended, mistrustful. “Why?”

  Día turned back to regard her, and the dog presently circling her legs, with what she hoped was perfect aplomb. “Because I don’t believe you will treat what I have to say with the delicacy it deserves, and because I can’t recall the last time I challenged your right to confer privately, but primarily because this particular item of business isn’t any of yours.”

  Twoblood blinked. She scratched, supplying her left shoulder with a fresh dusting of dandruff, and looked past Día to the Azahi, searching his face for hints or wishes.

  The Second Man of Island Town’s respect for unvarnished honesty was a virtue Día was only just learning to appreciate.

  “Don’t touch anything,” Twoblood finally said, and with one booted shove to force the dog through first, she let herself out.

  Día waited until the sound of those hard soles receded, suddenly beset by hesitation. What
if he didn’t believe her? What if his will and God’s turned out to be irreconcilable somehow? “I didn’t know she’d taken in a stray,” she ventured at last.

  “We don’t believe it’s a permanent arrangement,” the Azahi replied from behind her. “She says it belongs to that Elim fellow.”

  Día turned back in surprise. “Truly? He didn’t make any mention of it to me.” She glanced at the empty cell in the corner of the room, which Elim had occupied only yesterday. His horse had loomed large in his concerns, from what she remembered, and his ‘folks,’ and of course that inexhaustible fount of vexation that called itself Sil Halfwick...

  The Azahi said nothing, but graciously waited for her to come to the point.

  There were no other chairs in the room – another of Twoblood’s visitor-discouraging innovations – and yet Día could not bring herself to broach the subject while standing there like some petty messenger. “Actually, First,” and she ventured forward and around to kneel, one hand at the corner of the desk, beside his increasingly-surprised person. “I must tell you something about Elim’s partner that you may find difficult to hear...”

  “ARE YOU SURE?” the Azahi asked.

  “Very sure, First,” Día replied, “but I understand that it may be hard to believe. He doesn’t believe it himself. It’s – I can’t tell you what it was like to see him there, sitting up and talking and angrily dismissing the very idea, without ever once noticing the wine stains on his own back.” She glanced up, out of the memory. “The blood, I mean. It always settles in the lower parts.”

  The Azahi’s face did not change. He looked down at her, his gold-flecked skin appreciably darker under the eyes. “How did it happen?”

  Día had expected that question as well, but it was still hard to form her answer. “Forgive me if you are already aware,” she began. “There are four holy things that we do for our dead. We begin by washing and dressing his body. This we call the sacrament of water. Then we sit up with him through the first night, or if he was an unmarried man, we have a chaste woman lie beside him.” Día had no need to name herself here: the Azahi did not generally care to learn the particulars of the Penitent faith, but he knew that this was the principal purpose of her profession. She soldiered on. “This was traditionally done by a fire, to be sure that the body did not cool too quickly for the soul to escape, and so we call it the sacrament of fire. It concludes the following morning, with the sacrament of air. We give one breath to the deceased, and then press it from his lungs. This is done to cleanse him of any blasphemies or incomplete thoughts he may have had on his lips at the moment of his death. It is concluded with burial – the sacrament of earth.”

  By now, Día was staring at her feet. “The incident in question occurred during the giving of the third sacrament.”

  She loathed herself for treating it this way – for being so irrationally ashamed. But Island Town was already full of rumors and lies about her faith, and it was hard to avoid thinking how this admission would fan the flames. They already traded whispers about how the so-called Starving God ate the souls of unbaptized infants, and how his followers drank holy wine to rouse their appetites before they went out to devour the world in his name, and how dead men were secretly tied to the sun wheel to be sure that the blood settled appropriately, making their lower parts ripe for a more sexual devouring. Needless to say, not a bit of it was ever, ever true, and the fact that Halfwick himself – who had almost certainly been raised Penitent! – could imply otherwise made it all but impossible not to cringe in expectation of ever-more-salacious gossiping shame.

  The Azahi, like many of the indigenous people of Island Town, was not overburdened with trust in the Penitent faith.

  But he did trust Día. “So what you are telling us,” he said – slowly, thinking it through as he spoke, “is that there was nothing out of the ordinary about this particular case. Everything was done in the prescribed manner.”

  “Yes, First,” Día said, without a moment’s hesitation. “He was exceptionally cold, but I thought that might be characteristic of his race. I have not –” What would be the appropriate term here? “– cared for a Northman before.”

  That much was obvious. And certainly it was natural that the diverse races of the world should have their own physical peculiarities: Día had read all about it in Quervain’s De Systemate Naturae, and collected ample evidence by the simple act of living here in Island Town. The Ikwei tended towards rheumatism in old age. White Eadans suffered more from skin lesions. Few a’Krah could tolerate milk.

  But this prompted the return of a small, unwelcome worry: what if Halfwick’s restoration was not miraculous, but natural? What if the race of Northmen had some peculiar talent for entering a deathlike state, one even deeper and more profound than the healing sleep of the Washchaw? Certainly she hadn’t read anything about it... but then, vast canyons could be filled with what she didn’t have in her poor little library. And if the hand of God were not present here after all –

  “Then what do you propose?”

  That was the real question, wasn’t it? Día made a fist of the hand she’d left at the corner of the desk, and let her forehead rest in the thumb-wrapped spiral of her fingers.

  “I don’t know, First,” she said, though this was not quite true. “By whatever mechanism, he IS here, and anxious to see himself and Elim safely home again. And I don’t see any purpose in keeping him here with us,” which was putting it kindly, “nor any way of preventing him from running off after Elim, should we allow him to leave. And that isn’t – it wouldn’t be right.” She looked up at the soft, ageless contours of the Azahi’s face, surprised by her own fervor. “We... YOU took such great pains to settle matters fairly, negotiated with the a’Krah and even allowed Elim himself a voice in deciding his penance, and the decision born from that was the right one, First. It was! Elim admitted killing Dulei Marhuk, and understood why the task you set for him was a fair one, and he shouldn’t just be... plucked out of all of it by a hot-minded boy on a horse, no matter how exceptional the circumstances.”

  The Azahi lifted his eyebrows, and Día would have sworn his unchanging face came nearer to a smile. “And who said anything about giving him a horse?”

  Now there was a thought. Día stared up at him, amazed. If they let him go on foot – set him out at the front gate with nothing but a pack of supplies and his own two feet – then he could go wherever he liked, east or west. But he wouldn’t have the means to disrupt a street parade, much less a well-armed funeral detail.

  Día’s toes curled, digging into the dirt-packed floorboards. “What would you have me do, First?”

  He answered with an outstretched hand that, upon her acceptance, raised them both to their feet. “Do whatever best pleases your god and conscience, brightest – we trust you absolutely. However,” and he did not have to retrieve his marks of office for her to hear the invocation of authority in his voice, “you must make it known to the person in your church that the people of Island Town have already recognized the death of the visitor called Halfwick... and anyone found claiming his likeness will be charged with unlawful impersonation and contempt for the dead. Is this much clear to you?”

  “Yes, First. Completely.” There was no room for misunderstanding: any help Halfwick received would come from her exclusively... and he’d get out of town fast if he knew what was good for him. Día flattened her hands at her waist and bowed. “Thank you so much for your time. I won’t take any more of it.”

  When she straightened again, he was smiling. “Seeing you is always a pleasure, brightest – no matter how odd the prompting. You may thank Twoblood for her kind forbearance if you see her... but try to do it out of common hearing, or she won’t get her desk back until next year’s beans are reaching for the sun.”

  Día wished he would learn to put the stick across his door, for the sake of his own health and reason. Today wasn’t the day to say so. She smiled. “Of course, First. I will be the soul of discretion.
”

  And as she let herself out, the thought occurred to her that this was a promise doubly made. She would help to safeguard the Azahi’s need to work undisturbed, certainly. But she was now also officially responsible for getting Halfwick out of town before he ended up with a second noose around his neck – and without alerting whoever had set the first one.

  So perhaps she would reconsider that horse.

  BALTHUS THE SEXTON would have known what to do, of course. He had been gone for thirteen years now, but Día could still remember the precision with which he dug the graves: unyielding, unflagging, straightening from his bare-backed stoop only when he needed the use of a handkerchief to prevent the sweat of the living from defiling the earthy cocoons of the dead. Everything was square corners and strict piety with him, and God forbid he look up and catch you picking spear-grass or packing dirt between your toes when you were supposed to be praying the rosary. No question about it: if he were still here, that Halfwick boy would have taken a second look at things and lay right back down again.

  But Día’s father was dead, and Halfwick was alive – well, after a fashion – and the only family she had left was unfortunately lacking in moral fiber.

  He was still her papá, though, still owed respect and honesty... and as it happened, still doing a tidy trade in the livery business. If you needed a horse in Island Town, you would do well to start with Fours.

  It was this thought that occupied Día’s mind and guided her feet as she continued down the Winter Way. Giving Halfwick a horse would let him catch up to the a’Krah, who had left only a few hours previously, and could not sustain any pace faster than a walk. But it also meant that he was enormously more able to ambush them and steal Elim away. She would not trust him to do otherwise.

  But if she set him out of town on foot, he would have no way of catching up. More than that, nightfall would find him out in the desert alone – and so would others. If he were sensible, then, he’d understand that he had no choice but to cross the border and go home instead.