A Day in the Death, Part 2.

The coffin, he rested against a tree again. His staff, he asked the coffin's occupant to please hold onto, and so leaned it against that.

He then found himself a nice, sturdy stick with one tapering end that he didn't mind getting damaged. With this, he struck the earth. He dug and raked, and then cleared the debris away with his feet, until he'd made himself a clearing. Then he bit deeper into the topsoil, using both hands to twist and wedge the digging stick in and turn up dirt from a single deep hole. He did this several times, each at the edge of the clearing, until he'd completed a ring several paces in diameter.

Back into the trees he moved then, ears trained on the distant sound of trickling water.

It was a fine stream, small but clear, cut deep into the earth with the passage of time as it flowed down from the western hills. It did not take long for him to find the right type of rock at its banks, but it did take him a time to shape it. Until then, the clash of smooth, flat river stone on stone rang out up and down the banks. Eventually, he was satisfied with the edged fragments he held in his hands. The smaller, sharper flake, he tucked into his clothing, while he used the larger axehead on his way back to the clearing.

He whispered apologies and thanks to each flexible sapling as he struck its base with the rock. There was a woody knock, and a sharp rattle of foliage with each. It was a satisfying rhythm to beat out, and it only interrupted the dull roar of wildlife around him for a few moments each. Before long he was dragging several felled saplings with him. He stripped their branches and the more fibrous bark, which he thought would make fine rope later on. The first sapling was driven into one of the holes in the earth at the clearing. The old man mounded earth up around its base and packed it in tightly, and then he reached up to bend its other end down toward the ground.

He was lifted off of his feet before he could bring the other end down into its own opposite hole, which he also filled in.

Several more times he did this, each time tying the middles of the tense saplings together with fibers stripped from the bark. The finished frame was comfortable enough to sit down in, with room for tools and a bed if he was diligent. But for now, the skeleton needed ribs. These, in the form of shorter branches, he lashed in rings around the frame with thin vines once he ran out of softer bark. The lowest two were left open at one end, where he would put the door facing south. The bones needed skin, and so he ventured back out into the brush, confident that the coffin would keep an eye on things for him.

With the stone flake, he harvested the fronds from ferns and other plants along the ground level. And with each frond harvested, he spoke the words due to someone who was having a limb cut off. He took the time to study their leaves and their pinnation, thumbs running over every feathery edge briefly. A bushel was made, and a bushel was peeled apart to arrange tips-downward along the future wall, lashed to the branches with more creeping twine from the bushes. The old man felt a sweat coming on, and winced at the ache in his back from stooping for so long. But he had much more to do before he could rest.

The hours wore on and the sun began to blush dark and flirt with the western hilltops before he had angled the last series of leaves and tied them in place. A roof cap would be able to wait until morning- he expected no rainfall, at least not where he was. Hunger and thirst would not wait for him, however. He could already feel the pangs, and before long they would add to the shake in his hands.

First, he crept back down to the bank and laid down supine before its burbling current. He drank deep with his hands, until his stomach felt cold and swollen. Then he sat back on his bony arms and waited for it all to settle. Someday, he thought. Someday he would allow himself the luxury of a clay cup to drink from. Or perhaps a gourd.

Once it felt as though his insides weren't sloshing around with every step, he rose and moved back onto greener ground, where his digging stick once more became of use. The root vegetable bulbs he found were small and bitter, but if they spent a few hours soaking in the water, they'd be leeched of their toxins. He wouldn't be able to eat them that evening, but they would make for a decent breakfast. A small pile of rocks kept them in place as they laid submerged in the stream.

If they were still there in the morning, he'd eat easy. If an animal found them first, then... well, then nothing. Then that was a lucky animal.

Unlike the considerably less lucky fish which he began to eye next.

A Day in the Death, Part 1.

The one called Grandpa Corpse wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his wrist. He dared not touch his hands to his face, for they were caked in dirt and lurid honey. He stood up straight--or at least as straight as he could stand those days--and packed the earth flat with his feet. Then he took up his digging stick and cast it into the trees with a curse. He listened to the crack and clatter of it rebounding through the boughs, and waited until the rustling of leaves and underbrush quieted. The susurrations of the nearby river regained its prominence.

He found a rounded stone at its banks with which to scrub, and he did not stop until his hands were rubbed bright and raw. His feet he stamped in the shallows for some time, until the cold creeping into his joints finally forced him to quit, and to decide that he had done all he could. One last time he surveyed the area for any shards of glass or fragments of pottery. Satisfied that he had left nothing remaining of any jar or bottle, the old man took up his old staff. He apologized to the trees of that place as he left, explaining why he had chosen that spot, and promising them that they would not come to much harm from the toxins.

The sun had begun to rise by then. He could hear the fat red and green rooster crowing at his distant post, and the first villagers rousing themselves in reply. He would not return to the village- there was no need to, after they had agreed to take the young men in. He had seen to each of them personally, and the folk of that place trusted his word when he said that they would convalesce before long. They would work to make the riverbank a safer place.

A lone coffin stood nestled against a split tree. He approached it and ran his hands over its weathered surface, brushing some light debris from it and then kissing its face. There came a gentle tapping from within, and so he held his ear to the old wood. Then it knocked, much harder and louder, and he stepped away from it with a chuckle. He offered it teasing platitudes as he reached down and grasped its trailing rope, which he wrapped around one hand several times before giving it a pull. Once it was eased down onto the broad, flattened expanse of his shoulders, he hefted its weight with a soft grunt.

Cautious, halting steps and hard leaning upon his staff gave way to a slow but relaxed pace as he finally left that river north of the mangrove forests.

The sun was still rising, so he decided that he should rise with it. He turned west, toward the hills, and began to walk. He walked over brush, and along the dirt roads of the people. He walked through fields of taro, and along the narrow bridges woven across flooded terraces of deep-rice. He never walked through the shadow of a fruit tree sapling, and he always walked the long way around a den of animals. The walk turned into a climb, and by mid-morning when he could look out across the canopy below and watch the mist as it rose twisting and evaporating in the sunlight, he decided that he had punished himself enough.

He still needed the strength to settle down, after all.

Looking Southward and Backward, Part 17.

"It's time for me to be going, now." Elrusyo comments offhandedly as we reach a rare smooth patch of road leading farther and farther away from the river to our right.

Everyone within earshot, up to and including those among us who seem as though they would genuinely enjoy his absence, turn to look at him with confusion. He quickly takes on another smile like a house cat who's gotten the dove down out of its cage.

"I know, I know. It already feels like we've been journeying together forever. But I promise you all, you will be able to carry on without me. My training has demonstrated that for each of you." He gives us an agonizingly sagely nod and ignores the dense silence that follows, until one of us finally asks what he means by "training".

"Now, now, I don't expect you to heap praise upon me for it. But surely you realized why I came to you."

"To take our drinking money?" Ciudo asks innocently.

"No." Replies Elrusyo, shaking his head.

"To horrify us onto the precipice of a coma?" Sarq grips the edge of his leather instrument case.

"While that was thoroughly enjoyable, no." The hedge-sage says with audible satisfaction.

"To annoy someone new and different after it's become abundantly clear to you that you are a sad, lonely creature with no loved ones, friends, or colleagues other than eccentric..." Hraela begins, fire in her voice, before gradually trailing off into hesitation and finishing that line of thought.

Do I qualify as one of those eccentrics? If so, I am oddly flattered.

"Oh, how I'll miss you the most, my dear Gert. But, no. I came to each of you knowing that I could help tease out a much-needed quality for the journey ahead. You, with your fiery dogmatism, needed an exercise in appreciating a perspective other than your own. Sarq, I already emphasized your role's importance, and you performed better than some field surgeons in a pinch. And Robber, my dear friend, needed a couple of pints of reminding that you are not one of those stodgy professors- that among other things, you must feel the life you're leading, even if it's in a drunken stupor." He pats me on the back.

"... What about me, sir?" Ciudo pipes back up in the resulting silence.

"What?" Elrusyo blinks and looks to our young linguist.

"... Oh! Er. Well, you, ah... Ahem. Well! I only needed to verify it, and sure enough, you are exactly who and what you need to be in order to, uh, thrive among your fellows here." He slaps together affirmations hastily.

"Really? ... Huh. Oh, wow." Ciudo seems to sit up a little more straight in his seat now. We don't say anything.

"Anyway, I will leave you all to it. You've got a lot of ground to cover before the next chapter of your story, I'd say? I have faith that you'll get what you have coming from this. And you might hear from me again, before you get to hide away safe in your dormitories once more. But only when you aren't looking for me." With hardly any movement on his part, he sets a bag down upon the wagon bench, slides over to its edge, and then disembarks.

We offer him several goodbyes of varying intensity as he reaches the edge of the road and continues walking. We watch him for some time, until the progress of the caravan turns out necks to their limits, or the folded canopy at the vehicle's back obscures our view.  The others turn back toward one another and their own matters, discussing him for a short while before it peters off.

But as the wagons turn on a bend, I make an effort to stick my head out and crane my neck to catch sight of Elrusyo again.

It takes me a moment to realize that small shape in the distance is him. He must have been sprinting from the moment we pulled our eyes off of him, and then stopped only moment ago, to have gotten that far away in such a short amount of time!

Sarq pokes at the bag left behind nervously for several moments, before finally daring to open it up. Contained within are apparently many vials or strange or pungent liquids- medicines for Sarq to identify if he wants to be able to use them, evidently.

I look back from the strange gift to where I last spotted Elrusyo, and am forced to adjust my gaze by several more degrees. Somehow he's shot ahead even farther across the gently rising and falling alluvium past the edges of the heath. He stumbles, as if again he's just dropped out of a brisk run.

I shut my eyes, and rub them for a long moment.

When again I open them... the speck of a man has crossed the river's westward bend completely. I can scarcely make out any details about him now, except that he's apparently turned around to face me--me specifically, I can sense--and that he is now raising a rather rude gesture toward me on his fingers.

I turn away completely, and allow my strange friend to continue on, unimpeded by the tethers of observation as he forges on westward.

Looking Southward and Backward, Part 10.

Sarq seems nearly to faint for a moment, though likely more from disbelief at what Elrusyo has done, than from actual distress at the sight of blood. He shakes off his nonplussed shackles after a few moments in a scramble of quick movement which too, in a few moments, he fights against. Something approaching a focused calm comes over him, and a not-quite-authoritative voice comes from his mouth as he requests this, that, or the other thing of Ciudo and Hraela- his bewildered, brand new surgical assistants, it would seem.

They both shift closer to the flanks of their beleaguered colleague and offer what assistance they can- an apparently permissible act in Elrusyo's eyes, and an effective utilization of the resources at hand. Ciudo looks the most morose now, being unused to such carnage, but he tries to keep a steady hand as he fishes around for the proper tools and implements packed away in Sarq's small cases. Hraela seems more annoyed that they must now dote on this disagreeable man than bothered at the blood. Before long she subsumes her distaste underneath classic Gertisch stoicism- which is to say, she offers her silent, withering glare to everyone-and-thing, and not only their patient. She does however look favorably upon the bloody blade belonging to Elrusyo which sits nearby. Whether because of its craftsmanship, or the way he handled it, I cannot say.

Elrusyo himself seems to demonstrate the greatest self-control and composure of anyone in this cart, both myself and even the draft horse included. His fingers occasionally twitch and spasm as if from damaged and misfiring musculature, but from the elbow up he remains absolutely cool and composed. He even continues to offer casual advice and commentary to Sarq, though he keeps returning to the passage of time as imperative. The dark blood running from his self-inflicted wound is now forming a small puddle in between our huddled bodies.

"Careful with that tourniquet now, boy. Do you want me to permanently lose the use of my fingers?"

"It would be admirable of your foresight to get someone looking for an artery clamp or two."

"While it is permissible in this short-term scenario, I loathe to imagine what corruption that thing could cause without proper cleaning."

"Excuse me, nurse, could I please get a warm, damp towel on the brow? I am feeling a little faint and clammy... Oh come now, you feisty Gert. I was not singling you out for your womanhood! In fact, I was referring to your mute little linguist and trying to get him to speak up finally."

"Gah, careful with that! Apply the antiseptic, don't drown me in it! And don't you hold out on me, either. A patient--and their doctor--benefit far more from sharing a shot or two than any medical institution will admit. Come to think of it, just give everyone here a round. Especially if it will shut Robber's damned quill up."

The initial time limit is beaten, with the worst of the bleeding stopping before the pool of blood becomes frighteningly large. Still, the reek of iron is strong enough for people up and down the line to turn and wonder what is happening, and Elrusyo himself seems pale, weakened, and even a little quiet. Esgodarran brandy burns my throat and stomach, but enough that I am able to pretend it is fortifying me against the cold wind which still dips down through the high, hilly valleys to whip across our caravan.

But the real work of knitting everything else together begins now, and is far more grueling. It seems to be that Sarq has forgotten exactly what was requested of him, but Elrusyo does not seem inclined to stop him if he is indeed on a roll. Muscle, sinew, and skin will have to come together of its own accord, if it will at all, but steps can still be taken to foster it.

So involved is he, that he doesn't even notice the way his assistants shift away down the bench once more.

Or the fact that the other arm belonging to the hedge magician is now raised, hand extended to receive and shake the medic's. Elrusyo smiles the sort of smile normally reserved for professional False City grifters.

Looking Southward and Backward, Part 9.

The interrogation began with almost insultingly simple questions, such as how to locate a person's pulse, or what the shapes of leaves of common but irritating vines come in. But they quickly grew more and more difficult, and now Sarq has gone from from quietly suffering through the experience to being significantly more engaged. Now he actually has something to prove, it seems. Elrusyo is delighted at this, even as he produces vial after vial of strange concoctions for our companion to identify and then explain the full and proper use for. Purgatives, topical solutions, ointments, even a narrow glass tube of highly potent and highly illegal analgesic extracted and diluted from crimson honey.

A brief respite plays out now, as Sarq is finally given a chance to take a drink of water and remedy the cotton-mouth his new tutor is afflicting him with through this intensive and unorthodox quizzing. Ciudo and Hraela are both impressed by this point, both by our newcomer and their fellow, and earlier misgivings seem to be banished- or at least temporarily subsumed beneath a lively layer of novelty and spectacle. A bump in the road missed by the carts ahead of and behind us causes water from Sarq's ladle to be thrown up into his face, and so the exam break ends with a chill and some sputtering.

The farther away from the topic of medicine and the use of herbs they move however, the longer Sarq's pauses become, the more uncertain his answers grow. But he hasn't answered incorrectly yet, and Elrusyo seems sensitive to that. He's leaned in now, rapt concentration in his features as he stares almost unblinking at Sarq, as if he were instead listening to a flowing, informed lecture not of his own partial creation. All this does is cause Sarq to sweat more and more, however. He fidgets with his black hair, and one leg bounces up and down unceasingly and unevenly, with the occasional rap of his boot sole sounding dully against the floorboards.

Next comes the treatment of bodily trauma, with issues of blood loss and an avoidance of infection seeming to be of very great importance to Elrusyo. It appears that he also has an... elaborate system developed for the measurement of volumes of blood and other bodily fluids in creatures. A system in which the contents of an average-sized human are the standardized unit of measure. So, for example, as he explains to a bewildered-looking Sarq, one human's worth of blood is equal to two-and-a-half dogs, and the volume of blood carried by the draft horse at the head of our caravan is equal to approximately eleven and one-fifth humans, or "one deca-human plus change" as he puts it.

The cart-drivers within earshot of us are beginning to grow uncomfortable.

Still, Sarq eventually gains a sound grasp of the math, and with a bit of exercise in the physics of liquids, he is able to satisfy Elrusyo's questions regarding exactly how quickly one has to act and what steps must be taken if someone were to sustain severe lacerations of an artery or major vein. He produces objects of his own now, demonstrating that he did not leave home unequipped to deal with such injuries. Somehow, he had managed to obtain a surgery-grade set of tools and many, many yards of bandaging, gauze, and gut string. Neatly tucking it all away after the last nod of acknowledgement from Elrusyo, Sarq seems quite pleased.

Then Elrusyo asks if he's ready to give a demonstration.

Sarq begins to ask what he is talking about, when no one is injured.

Elrusyo pulls back one of the loose sleeves of his coat, reveals the inside of his forearm, and then draws a hitherto-unseen blade from his belt diagonally across it, cutting a fairly deep-looking gash into himself.

"You now have approximately ten minutes to treat your patient before blood loss becomes life-threatening; that's a little over four talecks, for you University kids!" Elrusyo exclaims almost cheerfully as he presents his maimed arm to my trio of horrified companions.

I quietly pull my legs in under myself in order to avoid bloodying my shoes.

Looking Southward and Backward, Part 7.

We slow to a stop at another small hamlet to water the animals again. It is past noon now, and we've eaten a meager meal while bumping back and forth in our carts, and sipped drinks at calm or still moments. One of the porters, a graying man with a bald patch on top and ruddy skin, enters deeper into the town and apparently runs into friends or family. The sounds of exclamations and calls come from the firmly locked homes as they suddenly open up, and before long no fewer than four or five people are out in the cold talking to him while we stand around and stamp in a line along the road.

I can hear bits of their speech carrying along on the wind, but I cannot understand much of it. Ciudo explains that it seems to be a pidgin of lowland and hill-dweller tongues, but it changes its own grammatical rules so freely from speaker to speaker that he can scarcely tell us what is being discussed, other than that it is some sort of exchange. This bodes somewhat poorly for his ability to assist us with interpretation in the future, given how varied and patchwork the languages of the land can be beyond the institutionalized sterility of Deneroth. But in this instance we are already covered, and I will keep that concern to myself until it might be mollified.

Eventually we witness the outcome of this, or at least one of them. The various locals, family heads apparently, duck back into their homes at length while the ruddy man, now veritably pink in the cold wind, ambles a few steps closer to us as if to move forward on something he is still waiting on. Then the doors open again, and many more people than before exit. They bear bundled rags or sackcloth bags, none of them very large or heavy or filled, but quite a few being produced regardless. These are promptly handed over to the man, and then to the caravan as a whole. He seems quite pleased with himself, and his fellows, previously taciturn from waiting in the cold, seem willing to give him credit as well. Once farewells are taken care of, the sluggish animals are spurred on again, and we slowly wind our way through the hills once more, now beginning to turn due south, and soon southeast.

The cart stores are now just a little bit heavier with dried fish or salted pork, a cask or two of drink with negligible alcoholic content for on-the-job hours, and a handful of other minor conveniences to get us a few miles further.

And, a man.

Sarq was the first to notice him, just sitting in my shadow at the corner of the wagon where the half-erected cover was most tightly bunched up, providing a windbreak for us. Sarq jumped in surprise and alerted the others, and in a moment the vehicle ground to a halt, stalling the rear half of the caravan. I personally had to pick myself up off of the wooden floor and pretend like I had not cracked my elbow on the edge of a seat going down, while turning to address this tag-along whom no one had seen in the hamlet or with the group.

He chuckles, but in the interest of not escalating our confusion into ire and getting beaten by a half-dozen mule-keepers and grumpy students, he shifts down his seat, out of the shade, and lifts his face up to be seen clearly.

He is... scruffy, in one word. Unshaven, but not given to an actual beard yet either, to give several more. Black hair comes down to his shoulders, a slightly out-of-place tooth juts inward from his smile, his gnarled and pigment-stained fingers clutch a walking stick with an iron cap on one end, and his cloak half-conceals an abundance of small packs, pouches, pockets, and utilities hanging from or sewn into his woolen attire.

He is, as had been foretold, excruciatingly Elrusyo-like, and he reaches out to shake my hand even as he tells me to put down that poor, abused quill and stop scribbling like a Low-Court proceedings recorder.

Ekundayo (2/3).

Click here for Ekundayo 1/3.



The girl plummeted into the fog, and into despair. Surprisingly yielding under her weight, the near-skeletal arms which reached upward cushioned the worst of her fall, and brought her down quite close to the muddy forest floor. Hardly scratching her likewise, the chipped and gnarled hands of the dead grasped her only as tightly as they needed to, in order to keep her from struggling free from them once again.

Still, she screamed and fought and kicked her feet, completely unhinging one side of the jaw of one of the dead things after she had begun the work in their last encounter. Her thrashing went on for some time, in anticipation of what was to come.

But nothing came. She gritted her teeth and shut her eyes tight, body going rigid and tense.

Still, nothing.

One hazel-flecked eye cracked open to peer around, and though she found the horrific stares of each dead eye upon her still, their owners had entered an almost placid stupor.

It then occurred to her that beyond the range of her attention, someone else had been shouting as well.

The shadowed figure strode forward in a huff, a hand deftly tossing and then choking down upon the length of a wooden staff, which then rapped admonishingly across the back of one bare skull among the huddled dead. The butt of the staff squelched into the mud again as they each groaned and turned their necks, and then a hand thrust into view. Wrinkled, mahogany-colored skin overlaid with dirt and grey-white patches of ash waved back and forth as a finger was thrust into the faces of the corpses one after another, like a mother scolding her children. A voice halfway between its natural state of measured richness and the quiver of the moment's excitement cut through the dead air.

"Bad cawpse! Bad cawpse, all of ya. Treatin' a chil' like that what you be 'spose to help her. Now ya let the gal down, an' you make ya manners. Open ya hats now, boys."

As if by magic, each dead and vice-like grip on the girl relaxed immediately, and she felt her heels sink into the spongy earth below as she was at last let down. But the urge to flee was superseded by her sheer confusion, and there her bare heels remained for a time. She stared up into the darkness as she reached back into memory, and connected that voice with a name.

"... Gran'puh Cawpse?" She asked.

"Abeni, my sweet'aat. Forgive the old boys their behavior. Ya been so quick an' vexin' to us awl night, they gone an' got bothered... We been lookin' for ya." The sodden grass pressed to the sides around his knees as he knelt down before the girl, who was much shorter than him despite his hunched and somewhat shriveled form.

Just then, a light flared up in the figure's outstretched hand, opposite the staff of twisted hickory. It was a pallid blue light which emanated from little tongues of flame of that selfsame color, each clinging to a fingertip. They illuminated the scene immediately around them, and it cast long shadows upon the trunk of the old tree beside them. Sure enough, the familiar face of the old man with balding head and grey-tinged eyes was revealed, smiling apologetically at her. And flanking them, the old corpses now bowed their heads and groaned in unintelligible apology to the girl for getting so out of hand. She was sure of it now, one of the bodies had belonged to the old butcher's father, died last year.

Abeni had recently turned eight years old, and she'd known the presence of "Grandpa Corpse" in the village for the entirety of her life up to that point. He was the weathered old man who tended to the rites and the burial of the dead, both in her home and elsewhere. But despite his ubiquitousness across the edges of the mangroves, even to the edges of the cypresses, she knew little about him. Even the name by which she knew him was a title ascribed to the man by the observant and uninhibited youths of generations past. Of course he'd never objected. And now suddenly he was in charge of the undead, as well as finding lost children?

"Ya mam an' pah been worried sick about ya, Abeni. They ain't seen ya since the fiah, an' they clingin' to hope that you come back home 'afore sunrise, safe an' sound."

Her heart leaped in her breast as she heard mention of her parents, and she seized the old man's hand in hers despite the flames. They gave off no heat which she could feel, however. His lips split into a smile and he gave a chuckle in response, before nodding his head.

"A'right then boys, she be ready to come on back. Hngh..."

The joints in his knees and hips popped or ground softly, but the man rose back up onto his feet once more. The oxhide sandals he normally wore were gone, and his feet too were bare but for the mud on them now. The little candle flames in his fingers rose up like a group of fireflies briefly, before settling upon the end of his staff and coalescing to light the way forward. Hands held firmly, the old man led the girl forward, followed after by the quiet procession of the dead. One step at a time, they walked slowly, and the swamp gently opened up to them.

The trackless wetlands gradually became more and more recognizable, until at last they were on solid ground again, rising up past the edges of the flood boundaries where it was safe to build homes. The hard-packed road which connected their village to the next stretched out before them, leading them along the gentle serpentine suggestion which accounted for so many drop-offs or thick knots of vegetation.

She saw the whisps of smoke rising above the treeline before she smelled them. It blended into the fog almost perfectly.

At either side of the road, so many buildings had been torched nearly to the ground. Their wood and thatching had been damp the morning of, yet the stubborn spark which had begun the conflagration was persistent. Abeni saw the charred husk of her family's own hut, and the hazy smoke from its smoldering joined the smoke above. She gave a soft gasp and tugged at Grandfather Corpse's arm, and he obliged her a few steps toward that side of the path as they continued forward. Nothing remained recognizable within the hut's walls. All of their possessions were gone. But she didn't feel the pain of it, strangely- at least not yet.

Past that and other hulks they walked, until the fire's limits were surpassed, and the untouched buildings remained. They had been more widely-spaced, closer to one of the wells, and plain luckier. Abeni thought she could hear the snores coming from within them, as families swollen with homeless relatives staying the night tried to catch as much rest as they could manage.

And these too, they walked straight past. Abeni looked up at the old man's face as if to ask, but the old man's eyes remained trained on the space ahead as he gave the same assuring smile. He looked tired.

Finally, he came to a halt, and she did too. A moment later, after bumping into one another, the dead stopped as well.

They stood at the edge of the wattle and daub fence which marked the edge of the village graveyard.



((As you may have noticed, I couldn't hold an eerie note for long. But it was all for a purpose! Following up on Halloween, this post furthers the cultural mish-mashing by honoring the first "half" of contemporary Día de Muertos, so to speak. Happy Día de los Inocentes to all.))



Click here for Ekundayo 3/3.

Ekundayo (1/3).

((In an effort to move away from the scattered parchments piled up high on the desk of Roberick Litte's office-bedroom for once, I've attempted to get into the spirit of Samhain-Saints-Oween Eve. Of course I'm garbage at writing actual horror, so my goal for this piece is closer to instilling a temporary sense of vague discomfort.))



The quick, damp slaps of bare little feet through the mud broke the uncharacteristic silence of the mangrove forest. The fog had killed the stars and moon hours ago, and the frantic patter of feet halted frequently as their owner slipped upon the spongy earth or fell between the overlapping snarls of roots which formed little islands in the swamp.

The girl with the scorched and tattered dress was small and quick, but the sounds she made as she thrashed through the water and trees drew them ever closer. Her shins were scraped by the ground and her cheeks slashed at by passing branches, splashing her brown skin with a raw and bloody red in places. But still, she ran on. She had to.

She had to get away from them.

The ones who reeked of earth and death. Gaunt old things, with lolling heads and a lurching gait. They shambled on two legs or crawled on all fours, but they never seemed to tire, unlike her. Again and again, the swamp turned her around or snagged her, and there they were again- gangling limbs stretched out toward her and gnarled claws groping blindly. There may only have been three, but there may as well have been three dozen. She'd lost track of how many hours it had been already. Shouldn't the sun have already risen?

Did she even remember the last time she had seen the sun?

Skidding to a halt at the edge of a river, the girl craned her neck and twisted it around, looking up and down the length of both banks. The curtain of grey hid the far side from her, but the sounds which touched her ears from that direction were enough to turn her away. Another one had gotten caught in the mangrove roots, she thought, and it was breaking through either wood or bone in order to free itself. One had cornered her minutes or ages ago, only to become trapped amid the slimy old husks, and she had kicked it so hard in her escape that its jaw had unhinged on one side.

Now, as before, the guttural, half-choked groans reminded her of a dog being strangled. It always went on for too long, but this time it was without end.

Revulsion filled her and made a shiver wrack her body as she thought she heard some deeper familiarity in those noises. But the rasp of long-fingered branches behind her wrenched her attention away from it. She'd stayed still too long.

Its distended paunch looked bloated and hard, but the rest of it was loathsomely thin, so that it looked like little more than grey-mottled skin stretched tight over bone. The dull ambient light reflected off of the almost glossy clot of dark, blackish blood which anointed its caved-in temple, and a break somewhere along its spine ensured that this horrific side profile was always tilted and aimed at her. No matter how violent their first deaths may have been, nothing seemed to stop them. One listless, milky eye swiveled in its socket until it settled on the youth, and then its mouth opened wide- unnaturally so.

A dry hiss came first, stopping and starting as it gave a glottal stop to voiceless words. But then the death rattle rose up from its throat and echoed high throughout the dripping canopy, eliciting cries in response from elsewhere in the darkness. They were much closer than even she had feared, and coming from every direction. She hadn't been escaping. She'd only been hedging herself in deeper from the start.

It didn't dawn on her as she stood there, transfixed by the dead thing's gaze, that it had stopped in its tracks as well, so that not even its exposed knee joint clicked and ground as it audibly had before. All she knew was the stab of terrified instinct at the base of her skull, and it screamed at her to move.

So her feet pounded upon the earth, root, and stone again, and in response the thing's screech was cut short with a sound of alarm. She dove into the trees through a space too narrow for them to pass through, but now the cracking and yielding of roots was at the back of her neck. A sob passed her lips as she scrambled forward from the convergence of tattered things blindly.

Up ahead was another tree. It was massive, towering above the mangroves all around it. It was an ancient thing, broad-trunked even before the rivers had swelled and flooded the deltas. Its roots dug deep rather than lacing across the surface. It was also dying, slowly poisoned by the land to which it no longer belonged. But it was still standing, and that was enough for her.

Dress hiked up about her knees, she clamored up against the giant and reached out for a handhold. The rotted bark gave way before her fingertips, but in a moment she'd found purchase elsewhere. She pulled herself up, higher and higher, legs propelling her desperately upward with barely enough time for her hands to hang on. The thump of bodies against the base of the tree came as they reached her, but she only felt the dead air shifting and billowing slightly below her toes as their flailing arms reached in vain.

Inch by inch, she savaged the side of the tree with broken little nails until the light of a hundred glinting stars exploded behind her eyes. To her dismay, they were not the stars in the sky. The torn bits of scalp and curly black hair upon the crown of her head told her that she had struck the underside of a bough. She grabbed a hold of it, and pulled herself upward.

Seated upon the branch, she could see them in the mists down below faintly. But by their motionlessness, she knew that they could see her perfectly. Her eyes tore away from the awful shapes and looked to the edges of the clearing, seeking any way out of this self-made prison. The limbs and roots of trees all melded together to create a twisting latticework of mud and weeping canopies, save for the ugly gash where the shambling things had forced their way in. It existed only for a moment under her view, before it too was filled up by something.

It was bent and narrow, but walked with far more control and purpose than the dead. It had a liveliness that made her breath catch in her throat. Could it be? No, of course not. She didn't even have time to think the words. The glimmer of desperate hope became stillborn as the things of rot down below turned to behold the newcomer, only to regard it with more mindless moaning before returning their gaze to the girl. The figure halted, seeming content to do nothing.

She hid her face away. It might still be a dream. If the sun came out and she opened her eyes, they would be gone, and this would all be over. She clutched at the blackened, ashy patches on the hem of her dress and wished she hadn't gotten lost. She wished for a lot of things. She wished that she didn't hear the groaning of the wood underneath her, or the thunderous crack as the bough suddenly gave way.

The gangling limbs and rattling cries rose up to meet her, as she plunged back down into the fog without a word.



Click here for Ekundayo 2/3.