Chapter 39: Day 38

Day 38,

Cass managed to talk her mother into spending the night in the Village yesterday.  I gave her the archive key and told her to wake me up first thing in the morning if there was mist out so that I could make it to the funeral on time.  Good thing I did because the mist was in fact out this morning and I didn’t sleep well last night.  And I doubt I will tonight either.  Tomorrow morning’s going to be fun.

Antigone was accompanying her daughter for the wakeup call.  I asked if the two of them were going to the funeral as well, and she informed me that they were going to push straight on from here so as to get back to the farm before the mists got too heavy.  I thanked Cass again for all her help and Antigone for letting her, and wished them a safe trip back home.

After finishing putting on the clothes I’d come to think of as my official uniform, stuffing a few morsels in my mouth, and grabbing materials to take notes for the archival record of the funeral I stepped outside myself and made my way to the market square where the event was to be held.  At this point, the mists were still just an ankle-deep carpet along the ground, which was still eerie in its own right, especially when it just sort of sticks to the ground on an incline instead of flowing down.  Still, the streets were already mostly empty of people and would remain so for the rest of the day.

When I reached the town square the crowd was fairly small.  Pat, Vernon, Martin, and myself there in an official capacity, and then the brothers, Lin, Huan, and half a dozen or so others as mourners.  Excepting myself and Martin, each of us took a turn sharing a memory we had of the deceased.  I gathered from the eulogizing that Bartolome had been a hunter, frequently away from the Village proper for long stretches of time and even in his later years when he started staying at home more mostly kept to himself.  A nice enough person, if distant.  And now was laid out on a cloth-draped table and surrounded by flowers and candles.

Except for myself, Vernon, and Martin in our garbs of office, everyone was dressed predominantly in white, including Bartolome’s body.  The similarity between the white drape he had been laid to rest in and the garb I seemingly washed ashore in engendered more than a few uncomfortable trains of thought.  Among them was the realization that I’d inadvertently spent more than a few days traipsing around the Village wearing something akin to a funerary shroud.

After everyone said their piece, Pat and Martin made a few closing remarks and everyone went back to their homes with a somewhat surprising lack of ceremony.  I myself lingered until the mists started to rise enough that I feared I might not find my way back to the archive if I stayed longer.  It’s a strange feeling, attending the funeral of someone you’ve never met and have no real connection to.  Everyone else is obviously emotionally impacted by the loss and it’s hard not to feel a little heartless by comparison.  Throughout the whole service I kept awkwardly starting to write notes on the eulogies so they could be properly archived (the whole reason I was invited) and then being overcome by the sensation that I was being incredibly rude and putting the notebook away, only to pull it back out again a few minutes later to repeat the cycle.  No one said anything or even spared me a glance (as far as I could tell anyway, which is, admittedly, not well), but still, dispassionately making a record while surrounded by the grieving just felt wrong, even if it was literally what I was supposed to be doing there.

And, I’ll confess, some of my lingering was driven by curiosity.  I think that had it been someone I knew I wouldn’t have wanted to see the body for fear of my last memory of the person being their empty, lifeless shell.  But in Bartolome’s case, this was our first and last chance to meet – so to speak – and I wanted to see the face of the man who, directly or indirectly, instigated many of the waves in the usual quiet life of the Village these past few weeks.  And while I looked at the body, not quite able to bring myself to touch it or even the table cloth it rested upon and with the rising mists isolating the two of us together from the rest of the word, I couldn’t help but wonder if it would be me laid out in the center of the square one day for the shades to take.  Would I go like my predecessor and just take a break from work to snooze off in a chair never to wake up, or would it be like the one before me now, bedridden and made comfortable by Lin or whoever succeeded her one day while I waited for the end?  Or would I have loved ones staying by my side to the end?  Or would I disappear like so many other outsiders, walking off the edge of the world or hurling myself into some dark abyss just to see what was on the other side?

Speaking of other sides, it struck me as curious that at no point in the service was mention made of an afterlife, only of the past.  Not even the shades or Catacombs were acknowledged or even hinted at.  It seems that the fear of speaking of such things bringing ill luck is made stronger by their proximity, not weaker.  That does not inspire confidence in the idea that whatever happens to one’s being after death is in any way pleasant.

And speaking (or not) of the shades, I was indeed tempted to hang around until nightfall so that I could watch them take the body, but ultimately I don’t think I could get close enough to watch without risk getting taken myself.  Maybe I could make something out through the mists and darkness from the windows of one of the houses bordering the square, but given how taboo the subject is, I can’t imagine any attempt at talking the residents into letting me use their home for such a purpose going well.

And so, eventually, I too left the square behind and returned to the nearest thing I had to home in safe distance.  Back in the archive I spent the rest of the day compiling the official record of the service, transcribing each mourner’s shared memory as best I could from notes and my own memory.  Which is to say, inaccurately enough that I hope none of them read it, but accurately enough that anyone reading a generation from now is unlikely to notice or care.

After that, I spent the rest of the day copying one of the archive’s more worn out texts to keep my mind and hands occupied.

Huh… it occurs to me that I never actually said what Bartolome’s artifact was or did in this journal.  The truth is though, it doesn’t really matter what sort of special properties it might have had.  It’s gone to the Catacombs by now – or else soon will be – and will never be used again anyway.  In the end, the only properties that really mattered were that it was one of a kind and two different people wanted it, and that want drove them to actions they’d regret.  If you really want to know those details though, go read the official funeral record; I recorded them there.

But now, it’s late enough that I should try to sleep.  Maybe with someone new among their number the nightmares accompanying the shades will leave me be for a night.

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