All That We Leave Behind

Ashra Beckett stands beneath unending night while six immaculate corpses dig their own graves. Her fingers itch, and not just from the cold of the glacier. They ache to call fire, to tear open the ground and end this protracted farewell.

But this is work of the body, not of magic. Her hands ache for more than her power – they ache to grip a pickaxe, or a shovel, to shoulder this work herself. Surely she owes them her sweat, the pain of her muscles, the burning in her lungs?

But Ashra’s power is of magic, not the body. She would freeze to death before she dug even one hole, let alone six. She’d thought to do a token of the work, enough for a gesture. But it must be her who fills the holes again, and so she saves her strength while zombies and skeletons carve fresh wounds in the ice.

She watches their movements, looking for any hint – any spark of the familiar. She hasn’t looked at them in this way for some time.

Ivy hovers a little way off, unsure whether or not to approach – to be present or to withdraw fully. She compromises – a novelty (the first, Ashra suspects, of many such novelties as they learn to adapt to one another). She stands at a respectful distance, between Ashra and the girl, Aspen, who’s bundled up in as many furs as the trio had been able to carry.

Aspen had complained at first at the delay, eager to be gone from this miserable place. From endless night, from unceasing blizzard. From the corruption that welled up from beneath and would have rolled over Toril but for the uncanny few that found themselves at the Howling Mine Encampment. Ivy understood, though, had shushed her sister, and settled in to wait.

“Why here?” Ivy has come closer, up to Ashra’s shoulder. She’s getting careless, so lost in her thoughts that she didn’t hear her approach. Although perhaps that’s no fault of her own; Ivy’s steps haven’t left so much as a whisper in the snow. “I mean, I understand... I think. But... this seems like an odd place for it. What about home?”

“Luskan isn’t home. Luskan is a… base of operations. If it still felt like home, there would be no one to bury.”

They’re quiet for a moment, listening to the whistling breeze and the steady chink of tools on ice. Ivy breaks first. “Still though, surely you want to bring them somewhere warmer?”

“I don’t think they mind.” She’s deflecting, she realises. It’s second nature, but it feels against the spirit of the— of whatever this is. Ashra sighs, and watches it mist and flow away from her in the wind, drifting out over the glacier.

“I couldn’t make them walk another step,” she says. It comes out in a rush. “I— They and I have travelled so far together. Or: I have travelled, and they have followed, whether they would or no. I have marched them from city to city, from operation to operation, all the way up to the edge of the world, when I—” Her voice catches. She almost breaks, but not quite. She takes a deep breath and forces herself not to tremble. “I should have let them rest a long time ago. But I was selfish and... and scared. They’ve been my strength. My... my—”

“Your undead army?”

Ashra laughs. Cold as she is, it sounds like a choke. Or a sob.

“Sorry,” says Ivy. “That wasn’t the right thing to say.”

Ashra puts a hand on her arm. “There is no right thing to say. But it was good enough.” She looks back at her undead. “They’ve carried me across the world. They’ve earned a rest.”

They watch in silence for a while. When Ashra laughs again, Ivy gives her a look of ‘what?’

“I’ve been trying to work out if there’s anything left of who they were. If they move in the same way as... who they used to be.”

“And do they?”

“There are echoes. A body remembers how to move, almost as much as a mind. Look, there, how that one holds the shovel. He fell off his horse once and broke his clavicle. His arm was never quite the same.”

“Did he hold a spade like that?”

Ashra chuckles again. “That’s why I laughed! I was wondering the same thing, and then I realised: none of them ever held a shovel in their lives. We weren’t that sort of family.” Ivy gives her a look Ashra can’t parse. “If I’d asked them to dig a hole for me, they would have laughed me out of the room, or more likely paid someone to dig it for them. And that’s just it, isn’t it?”

“What is?”

“This isn’t my family. My family died in a house, far away from here, decades ago. Because they wouldn’t cut a deal with some jumped-up trading company, who went and hired someone to butcher them in their home to teach people the price of doing business.”

Ivy says nothing.

Ashra shakes her head. “I know it’s not them anymore. I’ve always known that. But I’ve never been able to let them go. That night made me who I am, and... I suppose I have to be grateful for that, in a way. But that ends now. I have to let tonight make me someone new.”

The undead stake their shovels to stand upright in the snow and turn as one to Ashra, awaiting their next – their last – instruction.

She sweeps over to the zombie on the left and clasps its head. Its flesh – what remains of it after all these years, what hasn’t been replaced or regrown by her necromancy – has been frozen solid by the winds of the dale.

Ashra hasn’t looked into their faces for a long time. She’s spent years learning not to see their faces as they are now. 

“Thank you,” she says. “You who once were Kevan, thank you. Now rest. It is time to rest.”

The zombie steps down into the hole it has dug for itself. Ashra takes up the shovel and covers it over with snow and ice. A thin layer – all she has the strength for – but enough. The glacier will take care of the rest.

She turns to the next.

§§§

When she’s finished, she takes the dark, intagliated brooch from her lapel and places it on the ice to mark the six graves. She finds a frost-coated stone and slips it into her pocket, and, at last, turns away.

“Goodbye.”

And Ashra, Ivy, and Aspen set out across the ice once more, dreaming of sun-kissed beaches.