The Withered Husk Of A Gifted Six-Grader

She rubbed her face and sighed, wishing that they had been raised as an undertaker, or at least within the city: anywhere that they might come close to understanding that the character of the deceased meant nothing, at this stage. A steward of the dead was not allowed or obligated to care about that: the only priority was to see a body to its resting place, to treat mortal flesh with the respect all mortal things were due. If all things must die, then it held true — to her, at least — that all things must be cared for in death. Maybe Etienne could explain it, when Kaia made it back to the warehouse.

She leaned back and crossed her arms, chin landing on her chest as she let her eyes slide out of focus. When her eyelids began to droop, she couldn’t be bothered to put up a fight: it had been so many hours since Midtown, since the warehouse, since Jay's. The beginnings of a snore rumbled in her chest as cotton filled her ears — she barely questioned the presence sitting beside her, or the voice pricking through her blocked ears like a hot needle: “Don’t wallow, I hate it when people wallow—“

She jolted awake at the sound of someone knocking on the door by the bench, five dull taps amplified to sharpness by the tiled walls. She tried to shake off the dregs of her ill-timed nap as she rose to push the heavy door open, stepping out to make room for Goose to wheel inside, shielding her face from the gritty air. “She’ll be another hour, yet; maybe an hour and a half.”

“Good.” They had Gwenh's urn in hand, earthy-green glaze flecked with brown and etched with the relief of a snarling lion, nestled snugly in their lap alongside Kaia's favourite tote: a black-ash-and-sweetgrass basket that looked like an old-fashioned lunch pail, fitted with a fingerwoven strap they had gotten two summers ago after a visit to Kikino. “Have you slept?”

“A little.” She sat back down on the bench, shaking her head as she yawned prodigiously. Goose slotted in ahead of the empty space to her left, so that they wouldn't block the door — they didn't face her, letting the conversation happen as they stared at the same wall. “I need to find out who’s still here, and start organizing them. I need teams to pull bodies from the morgues and the bay, more trained undertakers for the crematorium, and people to take the ashes for burial before the urns start piling up.” There would be far more work to be done in the coming weeks, of course — there always was, when an enemy retreats. The fires needed putting out, the streets needed rebuilding, the land needed to be made livable again.

“Sounds like those are all problems for later.” They reached into the basket, pulling out a bottle of amber liquid and two cups. "Take an hour, and drink with me?"

“I don’t drink.” 

“I know — it’s ginger beer.” They handed her a cup. “Just pretend it’s real.” 

She swallowed her token reluctance with a mouthful of the fizzy drink, shivering at the pleasant, spicy warmth that spread through her chest, vaguely medicinal in its lack of sweetness. “So, what's next for you? Same plan?” 

“I think I’ll see what’s so special about Akwesasne, if Kaia’s offer still stands. Just a visit, for now, but who knows.” They paused, clearly debating whether their joke would land. “I think you missed your bus, by the way — got a Plan B?” 

She snorted, and their shoulders visibly loosened. “Etienne’s going west. I think I’d like to go with him.” He had often spoken at great length about seeing Window Rock just once with his own eyes before he died, and he could probably use someone to talk to on the long walk there — maybe she could get herself a silver-smithed clasp to go with her blanket, or some buttons. It would do Clover good, too, long stretches of new things to see and new friends to meet.

“Not staying in the city?” 

“No. Not for long, anyway.” Not after the letter Etienne had grimly handed to her when she had last stopped by the warehouse to check on Clover, typed on creamy, high-quality paper with shiny, colour-shifting ink:

Miss Mal,

I’m deeply sorry to hear about your recent losses. It's no small thing to lose friends, and I salute you for ensuring that the culprit answered for his crimes — I'm sure you've guessed by now that you and I are bound by similar hurts. Of course, while I am rejoicing in Aris Render's timely demise, others will not be so understanding when the security tapes come to light. My offer to you still stands, and without Aris in the way the transition will be near-painless: take the rest of the month to tie up your loose ends, and know that you and your loved ones have a place waiting in my protection.

Yours, and with great appreciation, Nadine Naloss 

As far as veiled threats went, this one was uninspired. Kaia, Zed, and Goose would be gone from the city before the matter became pressing, and Etienne would soon follow: everyone she cared about had set their sights elsewhere, and would soon be out of Nadine Naloss' reach. In the meantime, she would indeed tie up loose ends and leave things in a better state: she’d get Etienne and Baba to help train more people for the crematorium, have the furnaces burn 24/7, ensure that whoever was taking over understood what to do and how to do it. Once the last body was cremated and buried, she'd steal away in the night along with her family, and Nadine Naloss would be none the wiser.

“Mm.” Goose refilled her cup. “So, how are you feeling?”

She sighed. "Sad, but— but not in the way I'm used to feeling it. More scared, I guess: I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, and I feel like the longer it goes on the more it's going to hurt when it finally happens." She had thought that she would start breaking apart in the hours since finding Gwenh’s body, and even more now that her remains were being rendered to ash and bone, but she didn't even feel close to the proverbial cliff. When she let herself poke at it, the grief felt fundamentally different this time around — as though she had spent all of her reserves in the first bout, and now had barely anything left for an encore. “I shouldn’t feel so— so accepting, should I? There are moments where I feel almost normal, and then I remember what happened, and I feel so guilty for forgetting.” 

They shrugged. “It had to be done. I don’t love that you had to take his life, but I’m not going to judge you for how you feel about it.” 

“You know that’s not what I meant.” 

“Yeah, I do.” They sipped gently from their cup, looking grimly pensive. “I’m also— relieved, I think. I’m glad we have a body to bury, this time around.” 

She blinked and looked down at her hands. “Even though I could have saved her?” 

“Even then. She chose to make that sacrifice, Mal — we’re allowed to feel sad, and miss her, and wish it could have turned out better, but you saw that stuff she had in her mouth.” 

She pressed her clasped hands against her mouth to hide her pinched lips. “I’m not sad,” she quietly admitted, even though just saying the words made her feel so sick that she could throw up all of her ginger beer onto the floor. “I’m so, so angry with her. Why didn’t she let me help?”

“I don’t know.”

“What a noble fucking sacrifice — she gets to rest, and we have to keep going? What kind of bullshit is that?”

“She wanted to kill him.” By the tone of their voice, not even Goose was convinced. "She felt she had a responsibility to do it."

“She should have waited for me!” She was yelling, she was yelling so loudly and she didn’t know how to stop. “If she had just waited, I could have been there to help her, she wouldn’t have had to do it alone! I—“ She choked on her own words. “I could have done something, Goose — I had so many chances to kill him, and I just couldn’t, not until it was too late, and—”

"Mal, enough." Fat tears were rolling down their cheeks, curls quivering around their ears as they shook their head. "Enough, I don't want to talk like this."

It felt like she had tripped out of a dead sprint, pinwheeling for balance and heart racing as Goose struggled before her eyes, hand clasped over their mouth to hold in the noise of their grief. She had never been in this position, the one that Baba and Sabine inhabited beautifully, weaving in the first threads of comfort like surgeons: if they were here, nothing they could say would make things worse. Hesitantly, she reached out and squeezed their shoulder, fingers massaging into the soft flesh. They sighed and leaned into her touch, enough that she stood up and came around to face them properly, offering a hug that she was sure they wouldn't accept, until they threw their arms around her neck and keened into her shoulder.

She stiffened and waited for a threshold to be crossed, for a point where things would come naturally and she would know what to do next, but the not-knowing stretched on, and she continued to very stiffly hold Goose in her arms, bent awkwardly at the waist with her back starting to ache. Still, every time a part of her body dared complain, she ignored the offending appendage and offered more of herself for Goose's comfort, rubbing their back and tilting her head against theirs, soft and wiry curls tickling against her cheek. If it didn't come naturally, fine — she'd make it through with stubbornness, instead.

"I'm sorry," Goose said thickly, fingers curling tighter into the nape of her shirt. "I didn't know I could cry so hard."

"Don't apologize," she said, carefully turning their chair so she could sit down on the bench and keep holding them. Their arms stayed locked around her neck, and when she caught glimpses of their face out of the corner of her eye, their gaze was fixed in the middle distance. "I've got you."

They were quiet for a long while, tears still periodically rolling down their cheeks, occasionally sniffling. Their chin rocked gently against her shoulder as their jaw ticked. "Okay, that's enough," they said decisively, pulling away reluctantly and then hiding their face in their hands, seeming embarrassed to have needed someone in such a vulnerable way. She looked away to give them some semblance of privacy, taking her time in retrieving the bottle and refilling her cup; before long, they were extending their own, wordlessly requesting a refill. When she put the half-emptied bottled down between them, she glanced into Kaia's tote and almost flinched at the familiar slide placed within.

The ginger beer stung her nose as she picked up the slide, tilting the sepia between forefinger and thumb. Years had yellowed the white border, smeared the ink label irreparably until it was just a faint blue smudge. When held up against the wan overhead light, the photo itself was a slightly blurry and off-kilter shot of her and Gwenh, fifteen and sixteen: Gwenh was smiling wide with her eyes squinted almost shut, cheeks dimpling asymmetrically, while Mal was frowning at the camera: she remembered handing it off to her parents to take the photo, and had watched in despair as they both struggled to find the right buttons. Of the three shots taken, this one had been the best — the others only saw her face go progressively more sour, spoiling the way Gwenh had started to laugh, the corner of her grinning mouth pressed against Mal's furrowed brow.

She smiled at the memory now, and pressed the slide into her pocket. “What’s your favourite memory of her?”

Goose was quiet for long enough that she worried they'd chosen to ignore the question, and then: “Probably the first time I got her to sing on stage. She was such an insecure kid before that; seeing her take that leap made me and Sulien so proud.” They smiled to themself, lost for a moment before shaking their head. “You?” 

She scratched an itch on the back of her hand, only satisfied when the skin was red and broken. No memory was completely joyful, but touching them now felt less like a rotten tooth and more like an almost-healed bruise. “I told her that I worked at the clinic when we first met, and after she found out the truth I was sure she was done with me. And then a month after we buried Sulien’s ashes, she came here, looking for me.” The long-buried memory was expressed in vibrant colours with a sharp focus on Gwenh, everything else softly blurred — she couldn't even recall the words traded. “She was kind of a bad influence: I skipped out on work a lot to hang out with her, after that.”

“All three of them were bad influences. I was an angel, before I met Sulien.” They didn’t sound too torn-up about it.

She had never met Gwenh's eldest brother, but she felt like she knew him well, with how free she and Goose had been with their stories: Sulien had been a joker with impeccable rhythm and timing, who never seemed to get angry or hotheaded like his siblings did, who could defuse a fight with a word and a pointed glance.

She drew breath to ask another inane question, just to continue letting their voice wash over her tired mind, but Goose beat her to it:

“I hated how she picked her nose in public. It was really, really gross.” 

She snorted, reaching for the bottle and pouring herself another drink. “I hated it when she held things over my head and made me jump for them.” 

“Fucking tall people,” they agreed, holding out their cup. “Devils, all of them.” 

She laughed again, and found herself bumping up against something she wasn’t sure she wanted to acknowledge. After another stretch of quiet, she hesitantly said aloud, “I don’t like the person I was, when I was around her.” 

“Really?”

They sounded curious, but not surprised. She bowed her hand and tipped the cup between her hands, watching the drink swirl inside. “I don’t wish that we hadn’t met — I just wish we could have grown up.” She wished that she could have grown to appreciate how Gwenh had chosen her, in every way that mattered, had chosen her over and over again even when Mal had made things tense and awkward every time. She wished that Gwenh could have grown out of her fear of being passed over, the way she held herself at arm’s length from the people she was afraid of losing, even as she snapped at anyone who might come between them. “The minute I saw her again, it was like I never stopped being that shitty kid.”

“Oh good, you noticed.” They held their hands up at her withering glare. “Sorry, sorry, I thought we were being honest.” 

She rolled her eyes and took another long drink, swallowing too fast. The fermentation seared up her nose like whisky once did, and she had to plant the cup against her knee to mask her shaking hands. Goose would not be throwing themself into the bay the moment she turned her back. “How did you do it, when Sulien died? Actually getting past it, I mean — I don't want to lose all that time again, but I don't know what I'm doing wrong.” 

“It’s just this.” They gestured grandly to the empty room, and promptly spilled their entire drink on the floor. “Pour me another, will you?” 

“Stop spilling, I have to keep this place clean.” She refilled their cup anyway, now held carefully between two hands. They took another long sip and smacked their lips thoughtfully.

“After Sulien died, I sat Gwenh and Rowan down and I told them that they weren’t allowed to pull away or shut me out, not until they told me a good memory, something they hated about him, and the worst joke they could possibly think of. The kind of joke he’d tell, over and over again.” Their grin was a scheming one as they tapped her elbow. “Hey, what’s a skeleton’s favourite instrument?”

“I don’t know.” 

They were giggling so hard into their cup that they could hardly get punchline out: “Trom-bone. Get it?” 

“Wish I didn’t.” Even so, she was smiling widely. “Got anymore?” 

“I’ll save them for later.” They took a deep breath to calm down, though their eyes still shone with laughter. “For Gwenh, it’s got to be something different. We’ve already done the love and hate, so let’s say something we wish we could have shared with her.” 

She found herself nodding along — it was easy to talk about these things in this way, easy to sort her feelings into boxes and push them out into the world. “I wish she could have met Clover. I know we were never going to be married with kids, I know she didn’t want that, but I wanted them to meet just once. I wish I could have learned some Welsh from her, and I wish I could have taught her some more Kanien’kéha. That way we’d both be suffering.” 

“Will you teach me some?” 

“Don’t ask me, that’s Kaia’s call.” She shook her head and straightened up. “Your turn.” 

They puffed out their cheeks in thought. “I would have liked to show her some of these projects, get her advice — she had this way of coming up with solutions to problems I’ve been struggling with for months, just like that. And I keep thinking about teaching her how to play guitar, too: she was always being a pain in my ass, asking me to help her nail down melodies and chord progressions. Sulien never liked people touching his things, but Rowan would have liked her to have his guitar, I think.” 

“Maybe you can teach me,” she said, thinking of how she was among the few in Kawehno:ke that didn't have some fluency in music or dance. “How to sing, too.” 

“Ah, you can already sing well enough — maybe the guitar, though. Okay, now something you’re glad she missed.” 

“The year I thought I looked really cool with dyed tips," she immediately replied. "The bleach was too high, and with the green it just looked like snot.” The chemicals had made the ends of her hair feel crispy, but now they felt healthy and soft. “And I’m glad she didn’t see how sad I was, back home. She would have kicked my ass and cursed me out until she was blue in the face.”

“In Welsh, too — that’s how you knew when she was really mad, when she stopped caring if you understood the insults.” They looked down as well, a thin shield against their own vulnerability. “I’m glad that she didn’t have a chance to think I was being unfaithful to Sulien's memory, taking up with Kaia. She would have gotten over it eventually, but I’m glad to skip it.” 

“Yeah.” She was suddenly very grateful that there was no overlap between the eras of Gwenh and Maeve.

“And I should have listened to her more,” they continued, still staring down at their lap. “She was right, that Rowan needed help to stop drinking. I was always too proud to be wrong.”

She let their thoughts hang in the air for a moment, working up the courage to ask for more. She had only known Rowan after Sulien had died, and only ever with a drink in his hand. Gwenh had hated being around him when he was drinking, which seemed to be without pause: she had always insisted they spend time elsewhere, always grimacing as he shouted and crashed around in the background of their home — slowly, surely, her fear and distaste had become Mal’s, a barrier forming without her realizing, until it came time to step over it. "What was he really like?"

"He was a good kid," they sighed, shoulders drooping under a weight relieved. "He was shy, like Gwenh used to be, and I don't think he was ever going to get over that, but he was probably the best musician out of all of us: he could play like hell, and even though he never wanted to sing he could have matched Gwenh note for note." They paused, breath hitching for a moment before they soldiered on, "He was always trying to have long hair like Sulien, but he could never remember to brush it, and instead of detangling he'd just shave it off and start again. He liked make-up, and sometimes for a performance he'd make us match with him — raccoon-eyes, black lips, the works. He was stubborn like Gwenh, too, but I could never wait him out like I could with her. He could drive me absolutely nuts, some days, but I loved him to pieces." They shook their head sadly. "And I couldn't even see past my own hurt long enough to help him."

"It wasn't your fault."

"Well, you and I both know how little those words mean." Their shoulders drooped lower. "He wasn't himself, after Sulien died. I wish you could have met him when he was at his best."

She wished she could have known all four of them in a better time, a better place — but that time and place was gone, no matter how hard she pretended otherwise. She tossed back the last of her drink, the fizz burning through her nose. “I wish I hadn’t wasted so much time,” she told them softly, eyes fixed on a chipped tile on the far wall. “I wanted to believe that nothing had changed, because I hadn’t, that we could pick up right where we left off — and I believed it so hard that I didn’t listen when she told me she wasn’t coming home.”

They let her admission linger in the air for a moment, swirling their cup in thought as she clenched her jaw harder and harder. Just when it seemed that her teeth would crack, they sighed deeply through their nose and raised their cup. “To Gwenh,” they quietly said. “May she find her way home again.”

***

An hour later, the remains were ready to collect. Mal staggered through the lingering heat probably sooner than she should have, hands clumsy with sweat under the heavy pipe-fitting gloves; hot air blasted into her face as she turned the wheel and opened the chamber, even as she stepped out of its path. She paused to sneeze into her elbow and clear her nose, feeling congested and nauseous. Goose watched silently from the door as she raked the ashes into the funnel, sifting them into the open urn beneath the spout — no doubt remembering all those years ago when she had done the same for Sulien, and then for Rowan.

She set the lid into the urn and twisted until the brittle peg snapped, locking it into place. The clay was body-warm when she cradled it in her hands, heat soaking into her palms as she passed it over for Goose to hold. They stared blankly at the urn for a long moment, thumbing swiping over the carved lion, and tucked it closer to their chest like they must have done for Gwenh, when she was small enough to fit in their lap. At the quiet request spoken down at their feet, Mal stepped in behind their chair and pushed them outside, where Zed and Kaia were waiting patiently to join in their small procession.

As they walked, she found her eyes catching on the empty space where Niña once stood, only the struts and part of the harbour still standing in the water. The initial burn had left the air coated in soot, the filters in her snorkel pitch-black when she changed them on the hour, and even ten hours after the launch the air was still uncommonly hot and muggy; if Pinta's post-launch years were anything to go by, the city could expect considerably hotter weather and poorer air quality for the foreseeable future. In addition to the rotating filters in their snorkels and double-checked seals on their masks, the four of them now had to wear stiff plastic goggles to protect their eyes from the dust that had been kicked up by Niña.

She shook her head and looked away, fingers tightening around the handles of Goose’s chair, trying to put the creeping sense of dread and exhaustion out of her mind. It was about time to sing, but before she could worry about who would go first, or how to recite a couplet that had yet to be written, Goose looked to Kaia, reaching out for their hand, and cleared their throat. 

“Oh, the summer time is coming, and the trees are sweetly blooming,” they gently sang, voice soft but sonorous in the quiet, giving no indication that they had ever stopped singing publicly. Mal found herself transfixed by the words, vaguely familiar from hummed refrains around the warehouse, soft plucks of guitar strings in quiet, early mornings.

They sang alone until the end of the verse, shoulders rising and falling with the melody — when they paused for breath, Kaia picked up the chorus: “Will ye go, lassie, go? And we’ll all go together, to pluck wild mountain thyme." Goose looked up at them with smile-crinkled eyes, pulling their hand closer to tap against their chest. "To pluck wild mountain thyme, all around the blooming heather — will ye go, lassie, go?”

Goose sang another verse, Zed and Mal joining with Kaia for the second chorus, and then the third. The song carried them to the fresh grave snugly between Rowan and Sulien, bearing a matching stone marker painstakingly carved with the inscription Gwenh had chosen long before meeting her first or second end: Gwenhwyfar Del, who did what she could. Goose heaved themself out of their chair to kneel by the open grave, pulling Mal and Zed down with them so that they could lay the urn inside with three sets of hands. Mal bit her lip to drive back the tears, hands lingering on the clay: Gwenh's body had never felt heavier than when her entire essence was sealed in the urn, and yet she almost couldn’t will herself to pull away. It felt as though her fingertips were fired to the ceramic. 

Goose's arm winded around her shoulders, supporting her to sit back upright. Her hands finally came away from the urn, though it felt as though the skin was ripping from her fingertips, and her body moved along by sheer habit as she reached into her pocket and mechanically placed Gwenh’s cloth-wrapped glasses inside the grave. Goose followed with a long chunk of their hair twisted into a shiny, delicate hoop. Zed gave up Tai-Song’s screwdriver, the handle bound with a note and a rare white ribbon. Kaia was last, and to Mal’s surprise they gave up a small handful of dried clover buds.

She caught their hand as they returned to stand behind Goose, squeezing gently as they began to softly speak in Kanien’kéha, bidding the spirit of Gwenh farewell in the way it would have been done in Kawehno:ke. When her parents arrived, Baba would fill in the blanks that Kaia couldn't bridge on the fly, but for now Mal was content with this, closing her eyes and following along in feeling more than strict understanding. She had more to learn, as always, but there was peace in knowing enough to mourn. 

Three sets of hands buried the urn, pressing in the dirt and shale chips like they were packing down the roots of a transplanted tree. Mal sat back on her knees once it was done, fingers tangling in the thighs of her pants as she listened to the hot wind whipping eastward, singing in her ears to look out to sea — the nearer air was flaked with soot and dust, but the haze on the horizon was thin, so thin that she could see a blood-red sun sleepily rising from the ocean. Her hand moved to her camera on instinct; it only took a moment to snap a picture, but just like all the others the subject, composition, and context were indelibly burned into her memory.

A gust of hot wind ruffled her hair. She lowered the camera slowly, fingers clinging loosely to the pebbled body, eyes fixed on the horizon and the blood-red sun. With a voice vanishingly quiet, she spoke only to whatever trace of her friend might be lingering: “Your time here is over. Go and find the people who are waiting for you.”

***