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“Focus on drawing the spirit back, and breathe into their mouth, willing your life into their chest. And that’s it, though caution is never more justified—you can put them down just as easily as the rest but they’re no longer mindless, so they’re not bound to follow your ord—”

“Get offa me!” The concubine shoved Awa away, the young necromancer falling down hard as Gisela scrambled up. “Why couldn’t you make’er practice on that bandit?”

“You were handy.” The old man shrugged. “Where are you going?”

“Home,” Awa said numbly, getting up and pushing open the door.

“As the devil told the sinner,” the necromancer called after her, “you are home.”

Cruel Youth

Omorose was not waiting at the door when Awa came home. She sat in the back of the hut, staring straight ahead, and Awa bit her lip. She wanted Omorose to tell her it was different, to tell her it was a lie, but the corpse only sat there until Awa told it to get up.

“You’re not Omorose,” Awa said, her voice cracking.

“I am her body,” said the corpse.

“You’re not supposed to lie. He said you couldn’t lie.”

“I never lied,” said the corpse.

“You did!” Awa shouted, her stomach heaving. “You did! You told me those things, you told me, you told me you loved … oh no no no, not that, no, not that.”

“Yes,” said the corpse, its eyes still staring ahead. “I’ve been talking to myself using her, her body, I’ve put the words I want to hear in her mouth, and I made her touch—”

Awa was sick, hunched over and crying and unable to think. When she finished she staggered away down the cliff face and sat on the edge wondering how much she had imagined, how much she had dreamed. She had known her tutor was mad, obviously mad, but was madness contagious?

It took the better part of the day for Awa to pull herself together, but when she did she knew what she had to do. She marched straight back to the hut, more frightened than she ever had been before but resolute. She owed her, and after Awa had put Omorose’s corpse back down she squatted by her face, that stricken, long-dead face, and looked. There it was, the little shard of spirit she had been using to raise Omorose lurking in her mistress’s mouth, and if that were the anchor then the line ought to be …

Awa saw it then, growing off of the spirit fragment and vanishing, and she reached down along it with her mind, searching for Omorose. Then she exhaled into Omorose’s gaping mouth, and as she did the coldness hit her like a wave of frigid water, the rest of her breath sucked out of her lungs by the corpse. Omorose’s eyes fluttered and her lips rasped together, and then she opened her eyes and she opened her mouth and she sat up, not some simulacrum or hollow vessel but Omorose herself.

“You …” Omorose focused on Awa, who stared aghast at her lady. “You black bitch!”

The first few blows Awa accepted passively, letting Omorose tackle her and pummel her face. She deserved that, surely, but through her teary, swelling eyes she saw Omorose hoist a rock and she drew the line.

“Stop!” Awa managed, but Omorose did not listen and so Awa pushed the woman’s spirit back out of her body, her corpse slumping forward on top of Awa and the rock clattering down beside them. Awa lay there as the sun set outside her door, Omorose’s weight heavy upon her, and marveled at her own folly. Several times she caught herself talking to Omorose or herself, and finally she heaved the sticky body off of her and sat up, twilight settling over the mountain.

“Bitch!” Omorose came at her again, and again Awa dropped her back down, wincing to see her beloved’s jaw crack open on a rock as her empty corpse hit the side of the hut. The third time Omorose used an obscure Egyptian curse word but the stone she snatched up informed Awa of her unchanged purpose and so back down she went.

A different thought occurred to Awa, the harshness of Omorose’s reaction justifying sterner measures. She tried and found that raising just the body as she had