The Enterprise of Death - Jesse Bullington [151]
Once she had calmed a bit she retrieved the book from the grass and muttered an apology, but did not open it again until much later, after she had eaten and gotten a little drunk and grown tired of staring at the bloody sack that housed Chloé’s mortal remains. By the same time the next night Awa knew the little death would have to be removed lest Chloé actually die from the experience. Yet restoring her as she was would kill her anyway, and Awa could not very well avoid that topic any longer.
With a sigh Awa picked up the book, and asked, “Is there a means of restoring a dying person, or a corpse, to life, with its spirit intact, in such a way that the body does not decay but instead stays as it was in life?”
Yes.
Ah, the joys of one-word answers. Awa wondered if the book would burn, but pushed the thought away, and focused on the positive —there was a way. The undead she raised certainly putrefied at a slower rate with their spirit inside them, but Awa had enjoyed enough of the love of the dead to last a lifetime.
Only a dying person, though, the book wrote after a pause, as though it were considering her query. Once life has left the body then what you ask is impossible.
“Not much time, then,” said Awa. “How do I do it?”
You cannot. Only one of them can make another.
“Fuck!” cried Awa. “One of who, one of what!?”
Instead of scribbling an answer the pages began turning, and settled on an entry near the end. It had read “something” of the Schwarzwald, but the something was angrily crossed out and a new word written in, so that it read BASTARDS of the Schwarzwald. The old word had begun with a W or a V, but she knew she could find out the proper name by asking the book after she had read the entry. Settling in, the first thing it said was Avoid, followed by a catalog of attributes: shiftless, vain, difficult, obstinate, opinionated, boorish, gluttonous.
The cramped writing was broken up by the author, as though he were putting together a taxonomical volume.
Lifespan: Indefinite, unless one is of a mind to do some mischief with an iron stake and a stout ax.
Appearance: Hideously mundane. They eschew the charms of the grave, just as an idiot child, if allowed, would refuse to advance past a prepubescent state.
Corporeality: Mutable, but disposed toward physical materialization.
“Very nice,” said Awa. “Perfect, even.”
Scanning down, she noticed Cause near the bottom. Only they can create more of their kind, proving what a useless variety they are. They refuse to share their recipe for generation (or any other recipes, for that matter) and cannot be controlled by any known means. Again: avoid at all cost.
“Hmmm,” said Awa. “Hardly surprising that old asshole didn’t get along with things he couldn’t manipulate. Even if I can’t learn the trick maybe I could barter with one of them to do it for me. But how do I find one?”
The book flipped to the last page—a poorly sketched map of what Awa presumed must be the continent she had searched. A key set at the bottom confirmed this, and distracted by this new discovery, she set to orientating herself. There was a tiny island that must lie between her native land and the Spanish coast, and one of those peaks there must be where she had been indentured by her tutor, and here, this forest north of the Lombardy battlefields, must be her current position.
“Is this where I am?” Awa asked herself, and to her delight a small drop of red welled out of the page in the center of the wood. “Book, you’re fabulous! Now can you show me where to find the Bastards of the Schwarzwald?”
She eagerly watched the crimson drop sink back into the map. A moment later it reemerged an encouragingly short distance away. The drop grew larger, however, and her smile shifted downward as the bright red smear thinned and spread across the entire forested section of the map.
“That’s enough of that,” she said, closing the book and turning to the mindless