Tortus Bay

3.04: Bodies of Decay

When Henry slept, he dreamed of Emmaline. Sometimes she was as he saw her on the day of the festival: a pile of ambulating bones. Other times there was flesh on her skull, eyeballs in her head, or boots on her skeletal feet. She never said anything to him. She would not say a single word, no matter how he asked or begged. He brought her bones. Plucked from his fried chicken, stolen from the garbage, and then finally torn from himself. He did not know why, but he brought her all the bones in his own body.

He washed the grime of sleep out of his eyes, splashing his face with his one good hand. The other he kept in the cast. It had no feeling at all—unlike his chest. That had begun to hurt. A throbbing discomfort grew throughout the day, until he could no longer ignore it. Teresa met him at her door, and wasted no time in ushering him inside. Her house was still full of convalescing patients. Henry knew of at least one other significant weight on her mind, as well. "The rot is spreading," she announced, virtually as soon as he'd removed his shirt.

"So, nothing new."

Teresa spoke with uncharacteristic brusqueness. "The distinction, as I'm sure you're aware, is that you have quite a few more vital organs in your chest than in your shoulder."

"You think I shouldn't have done it?"

She retrieved a fresh vial of ointment, and set to work applying it around the edge of the blackened flesh. "Kara might have been saved by less detrimental means. You could at least have thought to let me take a look first."

"You didn't see her up close. I did what I had to do." He flinched away from her pressing fingers. As she roamed onto his chest, the medicine began to burn. "You told me that you thought you had a cure, anyway."

Teresa pursed her lips. She finished applying the ointment, and fetched a spare vial for him to take home. "I thought I had something for your shoulder," she said. "I didn't know if it would work then, and I am even less convinced now. But it is still worth trying."

"If I make it to next month."

"I assume you will not be taking my advice to rest until then."

"Why do you assume that?"

"Because nobody ever does."

Henry pulled his shirt on. "I don't want to die any more than you don't want me to."

She bit her tongue, gave him a long look, and then sighed. Her stiffness melted away. "I have what might be interesting information, if you are intent on further stirring the pot."

"That's what I do best."

"If you remember, I told you that I didn't recognize any of the sigils on the Cass headstone, which was true at the time. Then I started activating them. They revealed themselves to me, as they came alive. One to identify her remains; one to tie her essence to the earth; one to give a voice to the corpse; and many more besides. But the one that caught my attention was in the center of the plinth. It was the most powerful, and it activated last. Took nearly everything I had. Its purpose was to contain the magic inside of the grave."

"I'm not following."

"A sigil like that does not simply go defunct, regardless of whether its original creator is still alive. Emmaline did not break herself out of that prison. Nor could anybody else, unless they were extremely powerful in their own right. More powerful than me, by any rate."

"I thought you were the most powerful in the village."

She frowned. "So did I."

Henry collected his medication, and gently set his lifeless arm back in its sling. "Would that sigil work, if it were placed somewhere else?"