Medicine for the Dead

by Arianne Thompson

  In another time and place, it would have been awe-inspiring. The chant, and the kernels of the unborn, would have been shared among dozens of a’Krah, all of whom would have gathered at the feet of their prince to lend their strength to his effort.

  Here, there was only Vuchak and an unburied corpse to bear witness to the vision-seeking of a prince who was not even a man – who would not even be added to the two hundred and thirty-seven sons of Marhuk upon his death.

  Vuchak put away this thought, and all his others. He put away the burden of decision-making, and the illusion of control, and the urge to look back to be sure that Hakai was still minding the half-man. He put away anxiety, and resentment, and the small voice that whispered that this was futile – that there would be no answer. He put away fear. He put away shame.

  And when he had done all that, there was nothing left but faith. There was nothing but his laced fingers, cradling the sweet golden seeds of his race, and the tattooed mark of the atodak on his wrist – the flesh-written promise that his life was given exclusively to Weisei Marhuk, and through him, to all of the a’Krah – and the song humming through his throat.

  At the hour of my greatest need, you are with me.

  At the moment of my gravest doubt, you are with me.

  In this small and holy space, he had no task more difficult than to be what he already was: one of numberless others, a single eddy in an unbroken river of life that stretched back to the genesis of the world. He had been born from it, would return to it, and had nothing to do now but to be carried by it.

  And there was atleya in that too.

  All the days and nights of my life...

  A gasp pierced the air. Vuchak snapped to attention, to the sight of Weisei sitting bolt upright, his wide unseeing eyes returning from a far-distant place, his closed fingers smoking. By every grace, he had done it!

  Beside himself with delight, Vuchak hurried to ensure that nothing spoiled the gift. He quickly struck through the shape with the peaceful end of his spear, breaking the line and releasing its power back out into the world. Just so, Weisei threw the ashes of the thirty-four and the sixteen over his shoulders – left hand to right shoulder, right hand to left – and touched his cheeks with the heels of his palms. By the time he bounded up to his feet and stepped out of the shape, Vuchak was standing at attention. Weisei touched Dulei’s box first, and then gave Vuchak his ash-marks in turn. When all three of them had thus been counted as blessed debtors, Vuchak spread the five-hundred and ninety-eight kernels of the unborn in a circle around the shape while Weisei recited the Four Gratitudes four times each.

  And then it was done.

  “I saw it, Vichi!” Weisei crowed, seizing Vuchak by the arm. “Yaga Chini is waiting for us!”

  Vuchak, who had channeled his impatience into brushing the dirt from Weisei’s cloak, paused and stared at him. “Yaga Chini? Are you sure?”

  There would be water there without question: the great natural cistern had never run dry, not once in the last thousand years. But that was exactly why it was so dangerous. Yaga Chini was a magnet for sore-footed travelers, thirsty and desperate after days of chasing dry creek-beds and fickle arroyos... and for the broken men who preyed on them.

  “Yes, yes!” Weisei said, and cast his ashy hand up to the sky. “I was flying and I saw it there, like – like a jewel in a swift’s nest, and there was nobody, not for miles around! But there WILL be –” this in a confidential whisper “– because he wishes us to meet them there.”

  Vuchak held perfectly still. “Who?”

  Weisei cupped the back of Vuchak’s neck and drew him forward until their sooty cheeks touched. When he spoke, it was in a whisper too low for the West Wind to hear. “... I don’t know.”

  Vuchak pulled back, searching Weisei’s eyes for some hint, something that would tell him whether this was because the ones-to-be-met had not been shown to him, or whether he had only neglected to remember their faces.

  And there, just like that, holiness was gone. Already Vuchak was being eaten again by doubt, and mistrust, and disrespect. Already he was back to questioning the person whose word should have been unquestionable.

  Vuchak banished these thoughts with a single nose-channeled breath. Not yet. Later, inevitably, but not just yet.

  “That’s all right,” he said. “We’ll see for ourselves whom Grandfather wishes us to find there.”

  At that, Weisei’s hesitation melted into a wide, white smile. “Yes, we will – of course we will! Come on, Vichi, we must be going!”

  Vuchak stood still, patiently waiting as Weisei rabbited off toward the wagon, and counted. One, two, three...

  He made it to twelve before Weisei stopped, his posture stiffening as if he had been struck by a bolt from the heavens. Then he ran back, his smile now sheepish, and made the sign of a kindly god. “Forgive me,” he said to Dulei – and that with no smile at all – as he helped hoist the box onto Vuchak’s back.

  The corpse inside slid back with the soft, heavy sound of a sodden blanket, and Vuchak felt irrationally colder. In his mind, he saw him: the nude body, wrapped only in his sacred hue’yin, his limbs tucked and folded to make a fetal seat, head down, wrists and ankles tied. Probably his washed and plaited hair had already begun to stick to his softening flesh. Certainly he would soon begin to smell, and to leak.

  This was not lost on Weisei either, who made a point of restoring his smile. “Now let’s go and have dinner,” he said, and let’s did not end with na, ‘the two of us’, but with nat, ‘all of us’. “Or breakfast, or however it would like to be addressed.” He picked up Vuchak’s spear.

  “A very sensible idea,” Vuchak said. “We’ll be right behind you.” It was important to speak and act as if Dulei were still living – to encourage his spirit to stay with his body, peaceful, unspoiling. To resist anger, and resentment, and decay.

  With this established, Weisei turned again and ran on ahead, his black-feather cloak and long loose hair flying free in the morning breeze, his mind likewise fluttering away to some new thought.

  Vuchak did not hurry to catch up. He and Dulei stayed there for a while, back to back, with only a pine board between them.

  Even broken and finished, the circle was beautiful. The golden ring of corn, the shape of the crow-in-flight within it, the eyes of those who had gone before gazing serenely up at the sky. It would vanish in time: covered by earth and wind, walked over by animals, eaten by birds and insects. But everything that touched it would be bettered, blessed, and carry that blessedness out to the infinite far corners of the world.

  Vuchak stayed and drank in the sight until his memory had fully absorbed it. Then he and Dulei left the miracle behind and returned to the World That Is, mutually determined to resist its frustrations and temptations for as long as grace could sustain them.

  IT COULDN’T LAST, of course. All too soon, the Sundowners came back, their dark faces smeared with ash from who-knew-what. At least it was Way-Say who showed up first, too busy shouting about something to even notice that his audience had been shirking. Then Elim really did have to get up and finish the brushing. And then, after Bootjack returned and Hawkeye explained things to him – and you wouldn’t think it’d take all so long to understand that over on the civilized side of the border, horses wore shoes – he had to hunker down with the rasp and nippers and get to work.

  It was a wretched job. The kind where you didn’t have the time or the tools to do it right, and you had to settle for just doing it. Elim sawed on that foot fast and angrily, pushing to get it done before the horse got antsy, or Bootjack got sour, or the sun climbed any higher to vex his bare sweating back. He’d packed carefully, all those days and ages ago, but only with what you’d need to pull a shoe, see the horse to a farrier, and hand him the spare. Trying to make do out in the middle of godforsaken nowhere hadn’t figured in the itinerary. At least the nails came out clean.

  And the funny thing was, by the time all that was finished and the harnes
sing was done and everything was finally packed up and ready to go, what had been the worst trial imaginable yesterday – the rough wool poncho, the ropes, the heat, the walk – now made for a hell of a welcome change. Finally, Elim could quit thinking and trying and caring, could quit every need and thought except putting one foot in front of the other, and look forward to the moment when he could quit everything altogether.

  THE PROBLEM ABOUT knowing a thing, though, was that you couldn’t stop when it suited you.

  As his footsteps added up and the day wore on, Elim couldn’t avoid noticing the turn of Actor’s ears – flicking, swiveling, as if too many voices were all shouting over each other. More than that, he was carrying his head too high.

  Which probably was to be expected. He was generally the lowest in any given pecking order, taking his grazing orders from Mack and Naughty back home. Out here, without Molly or even the little mule to look to for help in deciding what to do or where to stand or when to run, he was left to figure everything for himself.

  It surely didn’t help to have a stranger at the reins, either. Elim wished he had words to tell Way-Say not to bother with those moccasin-shoes... or to tell Hawkeye to turn and watch the horse he was walking. What kind of ignorance did it take to keep your whole attention on the road, which hardly needed supervising, and none at all on your critter’s head?

  Well, the whole bunch of them would smarten up quick enough after the first spook. If they had to learn the hard way to do for themselves, then let it be. It wasn’t like it was any of Elim’s...

  ... well, now wait a second...

  Elim’s feet kept their pace as he studied the rope around his wrists.

  The other end was knotted around the rein tie.

  Which was bolted to the wagon’s under-carriage.

  Which was being pulled along by that very same twitchy thousand-pound six-year-old that nobody was paying attention to.

  So maybe he might like to be a little helpful after all.

  “Hey, Mister Hawkeye...” Elim called ahead. “Do you see anything funny about his feet?”

  Hawkeye stopped, and turned to look.

  Actor stopped too.

  The wagon didn’t. It kept rolling, forward and forward, and whacked him in the backside.

  And with one horrific shoulder-popping jerk, the rope snapped tight, and Elim’s feet left the ground.

  VUCHAK DID NOT understand what the half-man said, or see what Hakai found to look at. But as he walked beside their ragged caravan, he noticed a disagreement in motion: the horse that stopped, and the wagon that didn’t. In an instant, the two collided, and burst into panic.

  “AIA!” The horse bolted, and someone screamed. It might have been Hakai, as he was knocked violently aside. Or Weisei, as he was thrown backwards into the wagon-bed. Or the half-man, as he was jerked off his feet and dragged.

  Vuchak dropped his shield and spear and tore off after them.

  But already the wagon was bouncing, jolting. Already the horse was veering off into the wild, rocky desert. “Vichi!” Weisei shrieked, twisting and floundering amidst the baggage.

  “Steer back to the road!” Vuchak called ahead.

  “I can’t!” His voice was the screech of a hawk-snatched hare.

  Vuchak had no breath to spare for swearing. His eyes watered in the dust-blizzard of the wagon’s wake, his afflicted gaze ricocheting between the dips and rocks and weeds in his own path and the next fickle turn of the horse’s hooves. He ran left, sacrificing distance to clear his vision.

  And then he understood. The reins had been passed forward for Hakai to lead the horse, and now whipped and snapped at its side like a pair of black-leather vipers. The horse was slowed by the load at its shoulders, but it could break its neck if it stepped on the reins – and wreck the wagon if one of those wheels popped over a stone at that laborious gallop.

  The a’Krah had no gift for speed. That belonged to the Irsah, and their deer-legged mother. They could not shape the earth and call the rocks to move, as the Maia had done. They did not even have the old Ara-Naure talent for softening the minds of animals.

  So Vuchak sharpened his mind and his resolve, and simply ran faster. He ran until he was parallel with the half-man, whose helpless tied hands had already purpled with trapped blood, and whose parched voice still shouted as the rocks and weeds raked his stomach. He ran until his plaits no longer touched his shoulders – until the air was acid in his lungs, and his heart pumped fire. He ran until he couldn’t anymore.

  And then he ran faster. Faster, and level with Weisei’s reaching hand at the wagon-bench. Faster, and closer to the horse’s rippling black flanks. Faster, and within arm’s length of the reins.

  Vuchak grabbed, missed, and grabbed again. And then, accompanied by one final burst of speed, his fingers closed around soft leather.

  “Throw it!” Weisei called – which was good, because Vuchak had done just that. He flung the line up and over, but had no time to see its landing. The horse shook its head and turned toward the pull – straight into Vuchak’s path.

  He veered sharply left – too sharp, too left – and in one knee-popping gravelly skid, the angry earth stole his feet out from underneath him. Vuchak crashed to the ground hip-first, rolling to a stop in a cloud of red dust and a spray of flesh-scouring pebbles, and prayed to all the still-living gods that it had not been in vain.

  ELIM INSTINCTIVELY TUCKED his chin and shut his eyes, staggered by the thundering hooves and the wheels clattering and bouncing inches from his head, stunned by the rocks and weeds pelting his face, smashing his skull, raking his arms and feet. “Whoa!” he hollered. “WHOA!”

  It didn’t do anything, but he kept at it until his mouth was caked with dust and he couldn’t recollect what he was screaming at or why.

  Then the stones and the scrub disappeared, and the earth smoothed out again.

  Then the world went slower underneath him.

  And then he was still.

  His addled brain still rushed on forward, dizzy, reeling. But he must have stopped, because the line had gone slack and the ground had gone steady and the absence of any fresh new pains was giving all the old ones time to blossom into fully-flowering agonies, and he couldn’t take any more – not a single one more.

  But then again, maybe he didn’t have to.

  By and by, Elim realized that he’d been dragged all the way to the end of his road. This was his moment. This was his chance to escape.

  His body was so wrecked, so weak from days of exhaustion and hunger. All he had to do was leap up to his feet – make any kind of sudden, reckless jerk – and the holy harness that held his body to his soul would break like dry-rotted leather. He would be free.

  So his body would crash lifeless to the ground, and his soul would float up to heaven – well, not REAL heaven, obviously. But he reckoned he could make it at least as far as the garden, where it was always cool and springtime, and the work was always pleasant. He’d put his head down and do his part gladly. Maybe see Sawbuck and give her a kiss. Maybe see Sil Halfwick and give him a slap. And one day, Boss would pass on through, or more likely it would be Lady Jane who came first, being as she was that much older. And she’d run to him and they’d embrace, with her head at his chest and his cheek in her hair – and she’d still be smelling like buttermilk and linen, no matter what age she was in Eternity – and she’d cup his jaw between her dry work-worn hands and look up at him with her soft motherly eyes and speak to him in her sweet eastern voice...

  Where were you?

  No, that wasn’t right. He wasn’t thinking right.

  We looked everywhere.

  He was right there, though. Right there, dead on the ground, fifty miles deep into nowhere. Hadn’t anybody told her?

  Why didn’t you come back?

  Of course he’d meant to come back. He loved them. He wouldn’t have left them for anything. If Sil hadn’t rabbited off – if Elim had cared less about bringing him back alive, or selling those
baby-faced yearlings – if he’d had any kind of chance to tell somebody first...

  ... no, that wasn’t right. He could have done differently. He could have made it happen a different way.

  Mostly I was just tired of trying.

  That was what he would have to say. That was the truth. Nobody had put a bullet in his brain. Nobody had hung him from a tree. That strange chief, that golden-eyed fellow they called the Azahi, had even promised that he could go home and take Sil with him, if he did the right thing and earned the crow-men’s forgiveness. All he had to do was do it.

  And he WOULD do it. He would go home again. He would... or Boss and Lady Jane would spend the rest of their lives wondering why he hadn’t.

  Elim cracked his eyes open, re-admitting the harsh light of the earthly world. He crawled forward, like a baby, like a worm, until he had enough slack in the rope to put his tied hands to the ground. Then he pulled his left knee up underneath him. Then his right one. Then he pressed down on the world, slow, gingerly, his arms nothing but eggshell and glass.

  And the world moved.

  “Ohei, Ylem! Vivo estas? Lastimaste?”

  There was a shout, and someone in an awful hurry to do something, but Elim wasn’t finished yet. He traded out his right knee for its foot. His toes curled, holding fast to the dirt. And with one wholesome, right-minded heave, he staggered up to his feet.

  Well, almost. The left one didn’t get the message quite in time, leaving the rest of him to stumble and drop butt-first back to the ground. He couldn’t have said why that brought tears to his eyes. Or why he was suddenly in the shade.

  “Ylem?”

  Elim found himself staring at a pair of yellow-beaded moccasins. “Please,” he croaked, his tied hands clutching one dark, slender ankle with all the strength he had left. “I’m so hungry.”