by Terah Edun
They were coffins.
A horrified gasp lodged at the back of her throat before Rivan hurried forward and clasped a harsh hand over her mouth.
“Be quiet!” he hurriedly said. “We don’t know who else is in here.”
Trembling Mae wrenched his hand away from her mouth but she did as he asked. Moving closer to the first coffin, Mae raised her other hand higher to see what else was in the room.
Or as Rivan said, who else.
Frowning as the glow about her hand grew brighter and more of the room was revealed Mae realized that it was in fact larger than it had first appeared. Her glowing hand was throwing shadows out in every direction and even around corners.
Mae left her unoccupied hand drift aimlessly over the wood of the coffin next to her as she stumbled further into the room with disbelieving eyes.
Stacks and stacks of pine boxes met her gaze everywhere she looked.
Closer to the room’s walls that she could see now, the boxes were stacked higher. As they got closer to the center where she was heading, they boxes were only stacked one and two bodies high.
One is more than enough, Mae thought with a shiver.
She didn’t know what to expect. Were there actual bodies inside?
Would it be people she knew? Innocent villagers? Family?
She didn’t want to look and for a moment the darkness in the room, aside from the single glow of her lit hand, helped keep those secrets from her.
But she couldn’t look away forever, she thought with a gulp.
Mae felt along the edge of the coffin nearest to her and quickly before she could change her mind, knocked on the rim. She wasn’t hoping for an answering knock but rather the hollow ring of an empty box. To her relief, the box actually moved at her firm knock.
“There’s nothing in there!” Mae gasped out in sheer relief as she turned to Rivan to share her find.
He didn’t seem to pay her any mind as he brusquely walked forward.
“Good,” Rivan said in a clipped voice. “Now let’s get out of here.”
He began to weave his way through the maze followed by Mae with her still lit-hand held up high to guide the way with light and her other hand drifting lower to let small knocks on the pine boxes they passed. The sound of the knocks trailed behind them like the low beat of dirge but she didn’t care. Because with every hollow ring, some bit of dread in her heart lifted.
It wasn’t quite hope that replaced it but it was close.
As they walked forward in a weaving path, Mae had to wonder where all these empty coffins had come from.
Her people may have been beset by the persistent deaths of young children thanks to the wasting illness that ravished every generation, but even they had no need for this many coffins.
They were all full-sized too! Mae wondered as she looked around in disbelief.
Just from looking up and out as the shadows receded in the far corners of the room, she estimated that at least fifty of the pine boxes lined the room. Those same boxes had made the room look bigger from the door to the exterior because they were stacked so high and it was impossible to get a good sight-line with them in the way.
Now as they made their way to what Mae supposed was the center and she hoped, the way out, she wondered why her family had these macabre boxes around.
“This is a lot of funeral preparations,” Mae muttered.
“They’re not just for funerals,” Rivan replied to her absentmindedly.
“What?” Mae asked.
“Look inside one of the hollow ones and see,” Rivan said.
Outraged Mae hissed at him, “I’m not opening a coffin.”
“But knocking on them like they’re trees filled with maple sap is alright then?” Rivan asked dryly.
Mae stiffened. “That’s different, I was just—”
“Uh huh,” Rivan said interrupting her before she could finish.
Which was fine, she hadn’t really had an excuse anyway.
Then he smoothly reached forward towards the nearest pine box and before she could flinch, lifted it up to display the interior.
Mae had expected one of two things.
Either a completely empty coffin.
Or a dead body staring at her in horror.
Instead she found riches beyond imagining.
13
Although looking at Rivan’s smug face in the flickering light of her glowing hand, she could tell he had imagined it. What’s more he’d been fairly sure of what they would find.
After a moment of staring at the plants in wonder Mae had to ask, “How did you know?”
A flash of teeth in the light of Mae’s fire appeared in the darkness.
“I can smell them,” Rivan said in a confident voice.
Licking her own dry lips, Mae thought about saying she didn’t smell a darned thing expect the lingering effects of the acrid smoke but she decided that was a battle for another day.
Face filled with wonder instead, she let her fingers drift aimlessly over the purple-and-white flowers in front of her before plucking the petal of a single one and bringing it up to her nose.
Looking at it and smelling it was like being transported to another time and place.
It smelled of decadence.
It looked of luxury.
It was everything her family wasn’t. The fact that it was here in her greater holding was as much as aberration of the mercenaries currently barracked downstairs. But she couldn’t discount what was in front of her very eyes. The entire coffin was filled to the brim with the blooms she’d first seen while out with Donna Marie and Rivan two nights before. They were a lavender color on the tips and white in the center, a stunningly rich purple that she couldn’t mistake for anything else.
Mae couldn’t believe her eyes as she plunged her fingers into the flowers and found no bottom, just more and more petals at her questing touch.
The entire wooden box must have been filled with them! She thought in wonder.
She knew, without even calculating, that if that was the case, just one of these coffins would be a year’s pay.
“We told you your family had fields and fields of the stuff,” Rivan said in a chiding voice. “You didn’t believe us.”
Mae ignored his interruption. Her mind was awhirl with the implications and her face set with disbelief, Mae moved forward to a second coffin. This one right on the edge of the perimeter of the center of the room.
She barely glanced at the small circle of light coming down from the single skylight in the room’s ceiling, although it lit a small stack of coffins so beautiful it hurt. Instead she walked around into the open area and knocked experimentally on this new coffin.
The hollow ring sounded out.
Mae tilted her chin towards Rivan.
She was too proud to ask him to open it and too wary to do it herself, although she was eager to see the interior. See it filled with the purple blooms again.
Fortunately he had no such compunctions and swiftly walked forward with a snort under his breath.
Casually flipping the rim off for her to see what she had seen before.
A mountain of flowers that couldn’t be denied. Again they were as deep as the coffin itself was and looking around the room—Mae gasped aloud at the implications of how much these supposedly empty boxes could possibly hold.
“A kingdom’s ransom,” she whispered to herself as she turned around in a short circle.
“More than that,” Rivan assured her. “If they’re all full.”
“Are they?” Mae asked while glancing over at him.
He gave an experimental sniff then shrugged.
“The ones closest to the center of the room I guarantee are,” he said. “Its harder to tell towards the perimeter.”
“Like where we came in from,” Mae said as she reached deep inside this second coffin, cupped her hands and brought up the blooms to her face to smell the delicious scent of a clutch full of elderflowers.
“Exactly,�
�� Rivan said in a slightly irritated voice as he drummed his fingers on the side of the coffin nearest him. “Now if you don’t mind? We have places to be.”
He brushed past her to walk into the central part of the room, where a stack of five or so coffins were arranged in a pyramid format. Not too unlike the maze of pine wood she and he had just emerged from but seemingly set off from the rest all the same.
Wanting to know and unable to walk out without answers, Mae called out after him in a desperate voice as she let the flowers fall from her hand and then shut the lid hastily to hurry behind him.
“But why?” Mae asked confused. “Why are all these elderflowers gathered here and in coffins no less?”
“Two birds with one stone,” Rivan said, sounding sure. “They ship the flower-filled coffins down the rivers to the main cities. Offload the contraband at the ports, sell them for a high mark, and then make a few small coins off the coffins either sold whole or for scrap as well. It’s a tidy business.”
“You seem to know a lot about my family’s business,” Mae muttered bitterly. “More than I do.”
She wasn’t really accusing him of anything although it came out that way.
Rivan turned to her swiftly and leaned forward as he said with hard eyes, “That’s because I’ve worked with a lot of the same smugglers and dark merchants your family probably does everyday business with.”
Mae shivered.
Dark merchants, underhanded deals, port contraband. She’d never expected to hear any of these things linked to the Darnes family name. Although with the evidence piled ceiling-high right in front of her, she couldn’t deny it either.
“All this subterfuge to keep their fields of elderflowers secret?” Mae asked, shocked that her family could do something so duplicitous.
“All this to make money,” Rivan corrected swiftly.
She fell silent then, because what could she say. Rivan had lied to her before but the evidence, bittersweet as it was, stood stacked directly ahead. A room filled to the brim with dried florals worth more than all the gold she would see in her lifetime.
Flowers hidden in the vessels of death, she thought with a shudder as she gave the last coffin they walked around a wide berth.
Mae wasn’t superstitious but she had to think that her ancestors were rolling over in their graves at the disrespect given to their funeral rites.
Then again, Mae thought with a wry chuckle. They might have been in on it too. A crop this large doesn’t just pop up overnight.
If they were alive, the Council of Elders had a lot to answer for in Mae’s eyes.
As did she, she couldn’t forget.
As they passed the final coffins in the center of the room, Mae was surprised to walk on the other side and see a straight path to a door.
“Well, no more maze for us,” Rivan said in satisfaction.
“Yes,” Mae agreed as she passed the last coffin off to her right and the only one still even slightly in her path. It was nice to see nothing in front of her and finally they could escape this room and what lurked even further outside.
It was time to get some answers, Mae thought in determination as she let her fingers rap on the pine wood box she was passing as an afterthought.
She hadn’t meant to do it deliberately; it was more habit than not by now.
But the sound that rang back to her this time wasn’t the hollow ring she was used to.
Instead a deeper bass knock emitted. The sound of a coffin that wasn’t empty or one filled with lightweight flowers.
Mae froze as she turned to look at the pine wood box her fingers still rested on.
She raised her fingers hesitantly as she looked down, certain she had misheard.
Knocking experimentally one more time, the same sound emitted and her stomach dropped as she backed away quickly, straight into Rivan behind her.
“What are you doing?” he asked sharply.
Voice wavering Mae stammered out, “It’s different, something’s different!”
Her voice practically rose into a shout at the end and her eyes were pinned on the only coffin with a non-hollow ring that she had come across, so he didn’t have to ask her what she meant in this context.
She practically heard him roll his eyes as he lectured her.
“There’s nothing in them but flowers,” Rivan said snippily.
“I’m telling you, that knock doesn’t sound like flowers,” Mae said sharply. She knew what she knew when she knew it. And her hearing wasn’t mistaken.
“Fine,” huffed Rivan. “Why don’t you look and see then?”
Misery churned in Mae’s gut as he reached forward to tip off the lip of this new coffin. She was half-scared about what she would find and half-certain that maybe she was overreacting. That could be the case, although something told her it wasn’t.
Before she could object again, he flipped the coffin’s lid off with a flourish and this time the side fell down as well. She was expecting maybe some random odds-and-ends put in the box. Maybe a rush of elderflowers to fall to the floor at her feet. She got that and more as the interior was revealed and Mae couldn’t help it.
She screamed.
This one wasn’t empty.
Even Rivan stumbled away in a hurry at the surprisingly grim sight.
There was a body inside. Perfectly preserved and laid out as tradition required.
She’d only been to one funeral where she remembered the body clearly and the fixings, they’d done to it. It had been much like this. The left panel of the coffin was always set on a hinge so that the body could be eased in from shoulder level and then everything arrayed nicely before the viewing over the top was handled.
So when this coffin fell open, she wasn’t surprised at the mechanics. That was how it was supposed to work. But it wasn’t just the fact that there was a body inside this one that appalled her. Although that had certainly been the worst possible outcome she hadn’t been hoping for when Rivan rushed forward to flip open the lid.
No, Mae’s problem and the reason she was trembling was because she recognized the person who was laid out in the pine wood box and all the elderflowers in the world surrounding her form couldn’t disguise Mae’s stepmother from her eyes. She staggered back until she was a few steps away into the open path of the room, almost to freedom but not quite willing to rush out. Now that she had seen, now that she knew.
She was so upset that she stifled her magic without trying and without a source to feed from the glow ever-present about her hand died off immediately. Leaving them in darkness except for a small pool of light coming from a single ceiling window and hitting the coffins in the center at an odd angle. Not enough to light her stepmother’s face but enough that Mae could return to her body’s side without trouble when she was ready.
She wasn’t ready yet.
She was barely holding in a second scream and gulping back sniffles as she stood there squeezing her hands together in a fist for stimulation.
Rivan didn’t seem to recognize her distress in the darkness which was all the better. She didn’t want him to see the tears falling down her cheeks silently. That was private. He had already watched as she grieved when her parents had fallen to save her. He didn’t need to see it as she recognized their sacrifice and all the things she hadn’t said when they were alive.
Gathering her courage, Mae retraced her steps to move closer while calling up her magic once more.
If she was going to honor to her stepmother, she wasn’t going to do it in darkness.
She would do it in the light as a woman of her caliber deserved.
To lessen the shock, Mae’s gaze started at her feet.
She saw that there were piles of elderflowers filling the coffin just as they had the empty ones. They were over her arms, her chest, her face, her hands. Almost obscuring her form but not quite disguising the telltale color of her hair, the quirk of a smile on her still lips, the way her hands folded together so smoothly.
It was her.
Trying to hold back a well-spring of emotion, Mae reached out with a shaking hand to brush some of the deeper flowers off her face.
To better see her stepmother’s kind eyes once more if she could.
She didn’t care if Rivan thought her actions odd.
She was saying goodbye in the only way she could.
14
Mae couldn’t think for a moment. All her memories with her stepmother flooded her as she bowed her head over her coffin and wept.
“What are you doing?” Rivan said in an uncomfortable voice.
Mae had to laugh.
She answered in a torn-up tone, “What does it look like?”
He paused then he moved forward. She didn’t turn away from her vigil over her stepmother’s last resting place but she felt his presence over her shoulder. It was clear he hadn’t recognized the body’s form from far away which to be fair he’d only been met her stepmother once.
“Oh,” Rivan said softly, for once his voice was filled with regret the moment he was close enough to see her face.
While hers? Her voice was filled with horror.
“Yes, oh,” Mae responded dully.
At one point she would have turned on him in rage and bitterness. She still felt those two emotions but she was too tired to uselessly rail against the only ally she had at this point. So she swallowed the hate in her heart and focused instead on the love she had for the woman who had given her life so that Mae might have a few more moments of her own.
“I’m sorry about your stepmother,” Rivan said dutifully.
“So am I,” Mae said with sorrow in every word.
Rivan shifted behind her and something clicked in Mae’s mind with the rustle of his clothes, a stark contrast to her stepmother’s still form. She realized that she might not be the only family member left behind in this room. Her father and Richard had fallen before her eyes as well.
“She fought well,” Rivan said, as if complimenting her in death could make how her life ended better.
It didn’t but Mae wasn’t paying him much mind anyway. She began to race around the pyramid to check the other pine boxes stacked in the odd shape mae . Unheeding of the potential fright that rose within her. She didn’t care about being scared by a potential corpse when she was actively looking for them this time.
