Beorian Tales 14 - The Necromancer and The Angel

Chapter 2 - The First Visit

She watched as her only friends, and the only real family she had left, walked away from her, leaving her in the gathering dark. Because this part of town was not often visited, the Royals had decided to save money by only having one lamp on the street, which more often than not the night watchmen conveniently forgot to light. Emmy whistled, in a pitch too high for most to hear. Dingleberry appeared, popping out of wherever it is that flareys live, with a whoosh of air. He'd brought a few silvery leaves in with him, which floated, dream-like, to the ground, glinting dully in the twilight.

"Dingle, could you light that lamp up there? Thanks!" The lamp erupted like a small firecracker, which subsided into a soft glow. As the flarey began to alight on her shoulder, Gutshank leapt out of her hiding place and almost caught him. The necromancer-in-training giggled.

"You're getting careless, Dingbat! You guys go play for a while, all right? I need to do this alone." Both began their normal hide-and-go-seek antics. They were evenly matched, thought Emmy. She walked up to the Gate of The Cemetery of the Forgotten. The lamp's glow didn't reach beyond the green wall of a fence, but there was just enough moonlight for her to make out the outline of her destination. She walked down the center, past the four rows of headstones, and stopped in front of the Angel.

The vast number of the dead that she now stood upon was hard to get accustomed to. Nothing but ashes and dirt, all those people who'd been around a few thousand years ago. All mixed together with each other, as they never might have been in real life. All the poor, the lost, the abandoned, the ones without family or a friend wealthy enough to bury them with pomp and ceremony. The Forgotten was a sad but appropriate name for them.

For Emilia, things were more problematic. She had no memories of her mother, so there was nothing and no one to forget. But her not-father had said she'd be here. Ever since she was very young, ghosts would speak to her. She stopped telling people about it when they began to think she was crazy. Her not-father had long ago threatened to take her to Leaping Loons Sanitarium. When Khari told her about the place, she'd ignored the ghosts until, eventually, they stopped coming.

But here, perhaps if she just concentrates on that still point of light inside of her, the one she sees just before she goes to sleep at night, maybe her mother's ghost would come. She sat in the chair and looked out across the soil – was that movement over there? – it looked like a pool of water, reflecting the starry night sky. How odd, she thought, and closed her eyes. She opened her mouth, as if to scream, but slumped in the chair and was still.