A Day in the Unlife

            There are some things you get used to when you live with a necromancer. The strange looks the neighbours give you—although if you’re the kind of person who lives with a necromancer, you probably got a lot of stares anyway—the way mundane animals won’t go near your roommate, the odd hours, the spare bedroom converted into a freezer. Going out to cemeteries in the middle of the night, of course, although that could be fun if you didn’t mind a lot of digging[1]. And the dead could be pretty interesting to talk to. Of course, if you were one of them, you could be a little biased on that point, but at least some of them understood what you were talking about.

            What you never got used to was finding your roommate in a cemetery covered in his own blood in the middle of the night. Especially when it was your fault, because you let him go out doing magic alone even though you know he gets carried away sometimes, and now you have to explain to the paramedics even though you have no idea what the hell is going on.

            For Saturday, it was not a good night. Granted, it was probably a worse night for Rosseau, but unconscious people don’t generally give their opinions, so it was hard to be sure.

            Saturday was sitting in a plastic chair that had been designed for people of average height and that forced his knees up somewhere around his shoulders, staring blankly at the waiting room wall. They had been through things like this before, of course, because necromancy had a lot of relics from the days when everything was ritual-based and there are some things you can’t modernize, but it was still difficult. Because you didn’t know. That was the thing. One day the text wouldn’t come (and god, there was nothing worse than getting the text “possibly bleeding to death pls help” when up until now you’ve been having a very nice relaxing evening and were thinking of maybe going to bed around now) or he’d get there too late or Rosseau would forget to mention where he was going (no he wouldn’t, he was too smart for that, wasn’t he?) and then…

            He pulled out the flask without even thinking about it, drinking from it in a reflex born of three years’ avoiding decomposition. It was disgusting, but it helped, sort of.

            A pen fell off the table next to him. The room was so quiet it actually echoed, because nobody talks in a hospital waiting room. He reached down automatically to pick it up—oh, yes, and there was the other problem.

            Because Rosseau hadn’t said what he was going to do, just that he had work and where he was going, the kind of blank statement that Saturday was used to when he wasn’t needed for heavy lifting or companionship. So, of course, Saturday had arrived and discovered a lot of blood and a seven-year-old girl who had died over a century ago and whose ghost Rosseau had tethered to the piece of dull rose-colored ribbon now tied around Saturday’s wrist. The name on the headstone was Angelina, but he didn’t know anything else about the ghost because he wasn’t a necromancer and she wouldn’t give him her voice[2], which he supposed was reasonable since she probably didn’t have the energy for a lot of people, but it was overall kind of frustrating.

            At least she wasn’t one of the dangerous ghosts, the ones that got really angry when you tried to talk to them. Ghosts can only move things with the mass of a pen or less, but there are plenty of dangerous things in that category.

            It was almost one in the morning. If he had gone to bed, he’d probably have scared himself awake by now anyway. This was not much of a comfort.

            “What happened to yours?”

            Saturday turned, startled. There was a woman in the seat next to him, short faded blonde hair, an unaccountably fancy black dress with some jagged rips in the hem, and with the ghastly grey pallor that generally marked the undead. Impossible to tell her age, but she looked younger than him. There was a long-dead lily tucked behind her ear, which made her look fresh from the grave. Maybe she was.

            “I’m sorry, what?” That was rude; he’d have to apologize at some point, when he was feeling better, if he happened to still be here by then.

            She nodded toward the closed door which prevented him from running off to harass the doctors for information, and which he regarded with a kind of anticipatory dread. “You have someone in there, right? You don’t hang around hospitals for fun? In which case I would assume it’s your necromancer. I’m here for mine.”

            Not exactly, since his necromancer would be the actual person who raised him from the dead, but he didn’t feel like explaining. “Yeah.”

            “Who’s that ghost? Somebody important?”

            “I don’t know, Miss…?”

            “Oh, I’m Maddie.” She was chewing gum, he realized; the snapping noise made him flinch. She leaned toward him, and he could smell the nasty pseudo-watermelon flavour as she spoke. “So. The ghost? How come you’re carrying her around if you don’t even know who she is?”

            “Well, my friend—that is, necromancer—I don’t know what he was doing, but I found this ghost with him. I guess he must have needed her for something, and I couldn’t really just leave her there.” He wasn’t really listening to what he was saying. To be honest, he wasn’t really listening to what she was saying either. Hard to focus on anything right now. He’d been waiting an awfully long time, hadn’t he? No way of telling. That clock was broken and he didn’t have a watch anymore (remember to get a waterproof one next time, you’ll probably have to jump in the bay at least once more), but really, why was he so worried? It couldn’t have been that long. He had no sense of time. Everything would be fine, of course.

            Everything would be fine. It couldn’t not be.

            Maddie was talking again, something about her necromancer and how he’d been “kinda chewed up” by someone’s dog for some reason, and how she wasn’t too worried because “stuff like this happens every other week, doesn’t it?” She didn’t need Saturday to actually respond as long as he looked attentive, probably. But then she poked him in the shoulder, surprisingly hard, and said, “Hey, how old are you, anyway?”

            Unaccountably rude, but he was so startled he answered. “Uh, twenty-five. Three years dead.” That was something you had to include, to avoid confusion. Of course, sometimes it made things more confusing, because sometimes people didn’t realize that you were dead until then.

            She stared at him admiringly. “Whoa! Three years? I’ve been dead six months. Do you have any, you know, advice or something?”

            “No.”

            His tone made her stop talking to him, finally. Rude. Very rude. Now he’d definitely have to apologize. Later, though, because even though he felt bad now, he wasn’t sure he could handle a long conversation, which it would surely be. Maybe he could find her somehow. Look up deaths six months ago of women named Madison or Madeline or whatever else might be abbreviated the same way, and find her in the phone book…

            Angelina was poking him with the pen she’d knocked down before. He looked over at her and was confronted with a lot of wild and unintelligible gesticulation, made harder to interpret because she was mostly transparent under the bright waiting-room lights. She lost concentration, busy trying to make herself understood, and the pen fell through her hand.

            Time dragged. He almost missed the nightmares. At least you could wake up from those. Maddie left at some point; he barely noticed.

            And then suddenly there were doctors, and lots of whispering, and someone talked to him and he got the meaning but not the words, and they gave him a phone number and told him he should probably go home. And he did, stumbling around in the dark apartment because he didn’t care to turn on the lights, checking Rosseau’s glowing clock (was it really only two?), finally just stretching out on the couch and not worrying anymore, except for the normal background worry that was pretty much standard by now. Forget the nightmares, because this one was over now.

            Everything was fine.

---

[1] Because necromancy is one of the more unsettling types of magic, most magicians with an aptitude for it get a necromancy license when they leave school; this allows them to legally dig up bodies, summon ghosts, etc, although it’s considered very rude to do so without consulting the family if you’re messing with the recently dead. A necromancer without a license will be arrested if caught digging up graves, even if they are able to prove they are a necromancer.

[2] Ghosts cannot be heard by non-necromancers unless they establish a link to the person, known as “giving one’s voice”. Most ghosts can only do this with about three people because they don’t have enough spare energy for any more; in the case of child ghosts, there may only be enough spare energy for one.

Toast

            Today, I'm going to evict my roommate.

            I mean, it's not that he's a terrible guy, exactly. He makes me toast every morning, which is nice, and he's never objected to any of the people I've dragged to our apartment. He's usually a rather quiet fellow, and when he's got something interesting to say he waits until the right moment. But, well...we've had an argument.

            It was sort of about the toast, actually. It didn't come out right the other morning, too lightly done, and I explained this to my roommate as nicely as I could. He seemed apologetic, and gave it another try, but this time the bread came out burnt to a crisp.

            Well, I told him he'd just have to do it again, with fresh bread. He did it, of course, but this time it was accompanied by interminable groaning. As if making toast were so much work! He doesn't even have a job! And to further annoy me, the toast came out burnt again! Ridiculous!

            I informed him that he obviously had no idea what he was doing as I shoved another piece of bread at him. He became...very irritated. Irate, you might say. Not only did he burn my toast for the third time that morning, but when I went to take it from him, he burned my hand! Said it was an accident, or suggested it, anyway, but I didn't trust him. I told him I could make my own toast, thank you, and was about to do just that—when he shocked me! An electrical shock, I mean, not like he started stripping in the middle of the kitchen with the window open.

            Well, I said, if he was so offended by my making my own toast, then he had better do it right this time. But to no avail; he burned it again. Throwing the bread in the trash, I noticed that it needed emptying, so I took it out back. When I returned, what should I find but my roommate smoking in the kitchen! That was the last straw, I felt, and I got a bit carried away in my anger—I admit I punched him.

            Since then he has been sullen, sulky, refusing to toast anything at all and producing terrible groans when I ask anything of him. This morning I took him to a specialist, who told me there was nothing to be done.

            It seems I'm going to have to buy a new toaster.

Ralph

Anyone remember William? He has a friend. He's good at that.

---

    William was eight years old when he met Ralph. The other boy was two years older, although slightly shorter, and spent a lot of time around the rivers, which was probably why William hadn’t met him sooner. On this particular day, the older boy was crouched barefoot in the mud on the riverbank nearest William’s family farm, untamed blond hair falling into his face as he stared into the swirling water. He was trying to contact an aquean, one of the semi-human creatures that lived in the stream; one of them had spoken to him a week or so ago, and he wanted to see if he could initiate contact.

    “Aren’t you worried about getting that nice cloak of yours dirty?”

    Ralph spun around, as if about to deliver a witty comeback, although in fact he had yet to think of one. There was a kid sitting there, grinning in a way that wasn’t insolent but seemed like it should have been. He was barefoot too, and appeared to have been wading in mud, since the hems of his breeches were filthy, although the rest of his clothing was clean; brown vest, white shirt unsullied by a single scrap of dirt. His black hair was offensively neat when compared to Ralph’s own mess, and there was a laugh in his blue eyes.

    When Ralph failed to respond, the kid persisted. “Well, aren’t you?”

    “Are you suggesting I’m a sissy?” Ralph looked him over suspiciously. Many of the other boys in the surrounding farms had accused him of this very thing because of all the time he spent staring into reflective waters. This kid, though, just looked affronted.

    “Of course not. Why would I say something like that? But it’s an awfully nice cloak, and it seemed a shame to get it all muddy.” He sounded sincere, but there was still something in his expression, something that seemed like he was laughing at Ralph.

    “Well…yeah.” The kid was right, in a way: it was a nice cloak, the way it cascaded long and red over his shoulders. He suspected that his parents had gotten it for him to make him look more heroic, but it was hard to do that when you were ankle-deep in mud, and he didn’t care all that much about keeping the cloak itself clean. He grabbed the edge and brought it up to his face. Yep, covered in what his mother often referred to as “unspeakable filth” (particularly when he forgot to wipe his feet). After a few moments’ contemplation, he let the offending hem drop into the river.

    “So…what are you doing?” Ralph flinched; the mysterious kid was suddenly kneeling right next to him, staring eagerly into the water as if expecting to find some hidden truth there. It threw him off, the way the kid just seemed to assume that Ralph would talk to him. Sure, he hadn’t made any mocking comments about vanity or whatever yet, and he seemed genuinely interested in what Ralph was doing, but…

    “Look, kid. I don’t even know you—”

    “I’m William Chauncey. And you?”

    “Uh, Ralph. Ralph Gibbs. But—”

    “Oh, I’ve heard about you!” William tilted his head, apparently surprised. “I get the idea that people don’t like you much. I’m not really sure why.”

    “Yeah, I know.” So nice to be reminded of that. Again. He was getting tired of having reasons to dwell on it. “Listen, Will—”

    “William. I’m not a Will.” He sounded slightly offended, as if being “a Will” were something negative.

    “Okay, William. If you’re here to make fun of me or something, you needn’t bother. I know what you’re going to say. Although…” Ralph paused. “What did you mean, you’ve heard about me? I would think everyone around here knows me by sight, by now. Not for any good reason, but even so…are you new around here or something?”

    “No. I’ve lived here all my life, but I’ve never seen you before. I don’t spend a lot of time by the river.”

    “But…you’re all muddy.”

    “I was helping a dream toad.” William grinned. “She got stuck up a tree after she gave some ravens nightmares, and although I have nothing against the ravens most of the time, they can be awfully vindictive.”

    “Dream toads talk to you?”

    “Well, yes. They’re very social creatures.” He said this as if it was common knowledge. “Is that what you’re looking for, then? I know where a colony of them lives.”

    “You do?” Ralph blinked, shook his head. “This is some kind of trick, isn’t it?”

    “Er…no. Why should it be? You haven’t given me any reason to dislike you. Is there something I don’t know about?” William seemed honestly at a loss. But he’d heard about Ralph from the other kids around here, hadn’t he? He couldn’t have heard anything good.

    “In case you’d missed it, I’m not very popular around here.”

    “Oh, I know. But I don’t actually know you, so I don’t have any excuse not to like you. Except, of course, that you still haven’t told me why you’ve been staring into the river like that.” Pause. “That’s a joke,” he added hastily. “But I do want to know.”

    “Er…” Ralph was running out of reasons not to trust the kid. Hang on, was that what he’d been doing? That seemed kind of self-destructive, now that he thought about it. William had appeared out of nowhere and started talking to him as if they’d known each other for years, and was worryingly persistent, but there was something about him Ralph liked. “I’ve been looking for aqueans. I met one recently and she said she’d talk to me again, but she hasn’t so far.”

    “What’s an aquean?” If William leaned any closer to the water, he’d fall in.

    Ralph laughed. “You’ve heard of dream toads but not aqueans?”

    “I’m a land-based wizard,” William said defensively. “You can’t expect everyone to understand what you do just because you’re a waterworker.”

    “A what? Wait, you’re a wizard?”

    “Oh, yes.”

    “Aren’t you supposed to be…older? Or more imposing? Or something? And I don’t see a wand.”

    Now it was William’s turn to laugh, although it sounded not at all mocking. “I hear that a lot. But no, it seems I can be a wizard and a kid. And I’ve learned enough control by now that I don’t need a channelling object.”

    “I’ve never met a wizard before.”

    “I can tell.”

    “But what was that about me being a waterworker? What does that even mean?”

    “You’ve heard of wizards but not waterworkers?” Apparently William could get away with laughing at his own jokes. “A waterworker is someone with a natural talent for water-based magic. Usually it manifests as being able to communicate with water creatures, like your aqueans.” He turned to peer into Ralph’s eyes, a somewhat disconcerting gesture. “You didn’t know that?”

    “No.” Ralph absently trailed one hand in the river. “I never thought of it as magic, anyway. It’s just…a thing I do.”

    “Well, at least you know what your ‘thing’ is. ‘Wizard’ is a very broad term. I may never know the full extent of my abilities.” He frowned briefly, but his grin quickly returned. “So are you going to tell me what an aquean is or not?”

    “Oh. Right.” Ralph tried to make his explanation as brief as possible: an aquean was a humanoid water-dweller, with a certain range of colour-changing ability and webbed hands and feet. They tended to be rather small, large-rat-sized, and rather aloof. No, they couldn’t change their size. Yes, their colours were limited to those naturally occurring in water. No, they didn’t change colour based on emotions, like chameleons. He wasn’t even sure they had emotions. The one he’d met had been very distant. He’d intended to keep his description of them short, but William appeared genuinely interested, and every time Ralph stopped William would prompt him to continue. He wasn’t really very knowledgeable about aqueans, though, and eventually he ran out of information. When he finished, William nodded and got to his feet. “Where are you going?”

    “These aqueans of yours sound very interesting, of course, and I hold nothing against them,” he replied. “But I don’t see much of a point in pining after them. It’s all very well to talk with magical creatures—quite exciting, at times—but if you can’t convince them to do so, there’s nothing to be done. Have you been trying to find them since you talked to the first one?” He looked unsurprised when Ralph nodded. “Then there isn’t much point in spending any longer crouched here, I think. Still want to see some dream toads?”

    “Of course!”

    “Let’s do that, then. It’ll be much more interesting.” William reached out, and Ralph allowed the other boy to pull him to his feet. The wizard suddenly took off at a run, calling over his shoulder for Ralph to follow, which he did with great enthusiasm, his cloak streaming out behind him.

    Something occurred to him. “Hey,” he yelled. “Would you be interested in a secondhand cloak?”

    William let out another laugh. “Of course!”

    And that, as far as they were concerned, settled it.

William

I love this character. He sprang fully formed from an image of an irritating kid in an apple tree, and continues to provide me with inspiration daily. He's had some interesting adventures, some of them involving talking cats, which may or may not show up here later.

---

    This time he was sitting in a tree, munching an apple and dangling his legs insolently.
    "Why are you still here?" she demanded.
    He laughed. "Oh, for this reason and that one. Fancy an apple? I've got plenty."
    "But what reasons?" She was beginning to get very vexed with him.
    "Oh, that. Well, there are too many of them for me to tell even the ravens, and they can listen for hours when they've a mind to. The long and the short of it is that I'm a wizard." He took another bite of apple.
    "You can't be!"
    "Oh, can't I?"
    "No! You haven't got a robe."
    "And who said wizards have to wear robes?"
    "Well, you haven't got a hat!"
    "And?" He appeared greatly amused by her confusion, and he laughed when she scowled at him.
    "Well--well--you just can't be, that's all!"
    "Oh, all right, then. But if I'm not a wizard, then I can't tell you why I'm here." He winked and swung higher up the tree, out of sight.
    "Wait!"
    "You're very indecisive, you know that?" He reappeared, hanging upside down from a high branch.

- - -

    Now he was in the kitchen, sitting on the table and munching another apple, or maybe the same one. When she came in, he grinned as if at some private joke.
    She slammed her hand on the table near him, and was further irritated when he didn't flinch. "You'll be in trouble when Mother gets home, you know. Mother doesn't approve of this sort of thing."
    "Oh, I doubt I'll have too much trouble with your mother. Do you have any cold cider? I'm parched."
    "Right, I suppose you'll use your wizardly powers," and she rolled her eyes.
    "I don't think it will come to that. I'm rather charming, you know."
    Which was even more infuriating, because it was true.
    "You're just saying that because you're not really a wizard. You won't use your powers because you don't have any."
    He shook his head with an air of disappointment, though his grin never left his face. "Still on about that, are you? Oh dear. I believe I've already disposed of the illusion that I require a robe, hat, or wand. What is it now?"
    "Well--look, why did you have to ask about the cider, then? You should just know! Better yet, conjure up your own drink!"
    He dropped his apple core carelessly on the table. "That would be a dreadful waste. There are better ways of using magic, you know. And you never did answer me, anyway."
    "You're just an arrogant boy, that's what you are! You don't deserve any cider!" She felt a bit silly, having said this, but she tried to look stern anyway.
    "Well, well." He contrived to look affronted. "If you're going to be like that, I'll get my refreshment somewhere else." He jumped up and swung a leg over the window sill.
    "But--" For some reason, she suddenly wanted him to stay. At least until her mother got home, she amended, so she could watch her rage at him.
    "Farewell, fair maiden." And he was, suddenly and irrevocably, gone.
    A few minutes after he left, she remembered the apple core. When she reached for it, however, it was gone. In its place was a bracelet of some unknown material, a simple bangle of gold-veined red. When she slipped it on, a seed fell onto the table.
    She stared out the window for several minutes. Then she went out to milk the cows, wondering.

---

    He was standing in snow halfway to his knees, and his scarf, which was far too long, whipped around him in the wind. The snow collected on his shoulders and in his hair, and fell into his pockets when he held them open, but he didn't seem to be cold.
    As she watched, he scooped up a handful of the whiteness, despite the fact that he wore no gloves.
    "You shouldn't do that."
    He turned, smiled at her. "Why not, my dear lady?"
    "You'll get frostbite, or some such. It's like putting your hand in a bucket of ice water."
    "Is it really?" He looked surprised. "Learn something new every day, I suppose." He turned his hand over and watched the snow fall, fluttering down to become indistinguishable from anything else. "And who are you, who is so wise in the ways of winter?"
    "Stella." She felt, absurdly, that he was mocking her--perhaps because she had been so often mocked in the past. But he seemed perfectly pleasant. "And you?"
    "I'm William, when I choose to be myself. There have been times that I've had to be somebody different, but I think those days are over." He thrust his hands into his pockets and leaned back, staring up at the grey sky. "Walk with me, Stella, won't you? I could use the company." He looked over at her. "If you don't mind terribly, that is."
    He walked strangely in the snow, lifting each leg entirely above the surface before plunging it back in. Nevertheless, she found herself struggling to keep up with him. "So what are you doing in this town?"
    "Oh...nothing, really." And she looked at him and knew, absolutely knew, that he would tell her nothing more on the subject no matter how she pressed.
    They walked in silence for a while, watching the snow muffle the world. And neither minded the silence.

Daughter of Alnia

Contents
1........................................Castles
2.....................Backwards Quellen
3...The Vest of Feliciano Montgard
4...............................Jester's Mule

Salt Shakers

Because occasionally I do finish things, and they deserve their own category.

---

There were two ceramic chickens who lived on the counter. The rooster was white, and his name was Salt. The hen was black, and her name was Pepper. The humans always called them by their names, when they called them anything at all.

The chickens never called each other anything, because they were the only ones they talked to.

Neither of them had any legs, but it didn't matter because there wasn't anywhere for them to walk to.

The white one was blind, eyes cataracted by his own paint and by years of salt dust, and the black one was his eyes. During the days which they spent together, the days which had no beginning and had no ending, the black one would sometimes whisper to the white one about what was happening that he could not hear.

They kept no secrets from each other because they were their only company and because they had no secrets to keep.

Day after day, night after night, they sat and watched and listened and talked. They talked about the things that only ceramic chickens can rightfully talk about, because only they know.

They talked about the clumsiness of humans, and the meaning of life, and why a cat was, and how they had come to be. They spoke deep, insightful philosophy which no human would ever hear, but it didn't matter because no human could have truly grasped it. They said silly, frivolous things and laughed at jokes no human would ever laugh at, but it didn't matter because no human could have understood why they were funny.

Sometimes the humans that lived there needed their help, and so they called them by their names and turned them over and shook them over food. Sometimes other humans came, humans that the chickens did not know, and they would find themselves turned in every direction imaginable for hours and hours. The chickens accepted this, because they understood their purpose.

The two ceramic chickens on the counter have their story, and they are their story. It is a story of bright, sunny mornings when the humans spend hours in the kitchen where the chickens can see them, and of long, dark nights when the kitchen is empty and silent.

It is a long story, and it has no beginning and it has no ending, and it lasts until they leave the counter for another place. And then it becomes another story, so that the story can never truly stop.

There are two ceramic chickens who live on the counter. The rooster is white, and his name is Salt. The hen is black, and her name is Pepper. They sit on the counter, as they always have, as they always will.