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The next day I wake with the sound of water filliThe next day I wake with the sound of water filling a pot on the stove somewhere above my head. I groan, stretching out to my full length on the floor, kicking my feet out and curling my fingers in the air.

“I don’t suppose you’d want some breakfast, Lady Sybil?” Jun asks. Their skeletal figure hovers over the stove. I know they didn’t sleep last night–none of them did. I drag myself up into a sitting position and rub my eyes.

“What day is it?” I ask with a yawn. I’m still so sore after the days on the road and the magic that had raised my army of helpers.

The door slams open and Willard all but dances into the room. “Good morning, Lady Sybil,” he flourishes a bow over his arm.

I wince at the loud noise. While he is not speaking using a voice, but rather through magic that only I can hear in my mind, I am rattled by its volume so early in the day. I feel Jun scowl at Willard from across the kitchen, but he must not notice or doesn’t care, because he crouches beside me on the floor and continues to speak. “It looks like the day’s already here. We made sure to be extra quiet through the night–though we may need some more nails and hammers so we can finish our own sleeping quarters, well you know how we don’t sleep, my lady, but we all put our skulls together, Henry too, by the way, though they don’t talk much–and we agreed to stay out of view during the day and work through the night so that–”

I hold up a hand, and out of the corner of my eye I see Jun moving ever-closer with a ladle in their hand. “Hold on, Willard. Slow down, please.” I beg, my head is already spinning.

Willard nods enthusiastically and Jun watches me carefully from over his shoulder, ladle raised and ready to use at my say-so. I just want to go back to sleep. He raises a finger. “Shelter, mostly done. Need nails.”

Actually, that was way better than I expected, I think and nod. “I can do that. What do you mean mostly done?”

He taps his jaw with a fingertip, making a gentle clicking noise of consideration. He glances at the door, where Henry’s hulking form blocks the early day’s sunlight. The great clay shoulders raise and lower. Willard nods, “What they said. It’s basically done.”

“By basically, you mean…”

“It looks really nice, boss ma’am,” Lasis murmurs, peeking through the doorway at me. “Do you want to see?”

I glance back at Jun who has set down their ladle. They nod twice at me. I return a weak grin. “Okay,” I say and work myself into a standing position. I follow them out into the yard and stall, stunned.

I rub my eyes, thinking I’ve emerged from a dream. The yard looks completely different than it had when I had gone to sleep. There are already three rows tilled, a broken plow halfway through a fourth; rocks had been pulled from the ground and stacked the beginnings of a fence around her little hut and an entirely new structure.

The shed didn’t exist yesterday, but today it’s about six feet high, all dead lumber dragged from the nearby treeline, chiseled and fitted together and lifted one over the other over the other until it was essentially a home for her new friends… without the very important detail of a roof.

Willard gestures excitedly at it, waving his arms to take in the building. “Just a few touches necessary, then we’re good.”

I’m speechless, frankly. I clear my throat. “Did you do all of this last night?” I ask the gathered group of skeletons.

Jun is standing behind me in the doorway. They crane their head over mine to see and I can feel them frown.

“Most of it,” Lasis says, digging their foot through the dirt.

“Oh I knew she wouldn’t like it,” Amelia sighs, sounding miserable.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Roderick assures her, hands resting gently on her scapula. “She probably just needs to come to terms with the productivity.”

A sputtering built up deep in my stomach, then spewed through my mouth. “You did this in one night!?”

Henry nods emphatically behind me.

“Yes, my lady. Henry helped us with the logs, Willard and Roderick cut into it. Lasis and I worked the earth,” Samantha’s soft voice speaks up. “Was it too much?”

I rub my face, trying to perform the calculus it’ll take to convince the townspeople I certainly did this all on my own, if they were to come up this way today and see all of the many improvements that had been made to the farm.

But there had been a necromancer here before, I reminded myself. Maybe the townspeople wouldn’t be as averse to my magic as I thought.

But on the off-chance this northern town was too disconnected from the area I grew up in… I wince. “Okay,” I say and clasp my hands together. “Here’s the deal. I’m going to go to town and see about getting us a roof.” Willard, Rod, and Amelia all cheer. Lasis, Samantha, Jun, and Henry straighten. “But you need to go… rest. Go into stasis. I can’t have you on the farm doing that.”

Amelia nods at me. “That won’t be a problem, my lady. We found a nice, hidden spot in the forest. It’s where we placed the others.”

The thought of having more helpers when I was already struggling with this over-productivity dilemma made my heart sink, but I pushed it away. “Okay. Hang out there until I return.”

“You’ll remember to get a blanket, won’t you?” Jun asks from behind me, their voice rough.

“Yes, I will get a proper bedroll. Like I promised.” I smile reassuringly, and they nod.

“Only problem.” Willard scratches his skull, distal scratching against his cranium.

“Yes?”

“What are we supposed to do?”

Samantha shakes her head at my side, “Rest.”

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Roderick shrugs. “Not sure if I even know what that means. We’ve been resting too long.”

Henry is silent, solid, awaiting my directions.

I cross my arms over my stomach, the chill of the morning finally creeping from my numb feet into my shins. “I don’t know. Find us some food? Edible mushrooms and herbs.” I raise a finger quickly as they begin to turn away from me, eager to obey. “No meat.”

Willard salutes me, “No meat, my lady.”

They hustle away from me, and I’m left alone with Jun and Henry. I turn to them, “I’m sorry, Jun, I’ll need you to be out there too.”

Jun shrugs, “As soon as you eat breakfast.”

I exchange a look with Henry. They also shrug, as if to say, You heard them.

Sighing, I follow them back into the little house to eat.

The walk down to town is a bit shorter than I remember from the day before; which may or may not have more to do with the fact that I’m walking downhill than that it’s actually a shorter distance. In either case, it still takes me almost an hour. In my defense, I needed to take a short break to dig a rock from my shoe.

I spent a lot of the time coming down the hill worrying about my little group of ambitious friends. I expect very little beyond a pile of food foraged through half of the forest that I’ll need to figure out how to preserve. When I finally see the steep, thatched roofs, my feet kick up in excitement. And then they slow as a nagging anxiety pulls at me. Will they like me? Should I stay out of the way? Should I make friends?

I spent a great deal of my last life avoiding people–or rather, any person that might be caught in the crossfire of a war while they tried to maintain their livelihoods. Before then, most of my social life had been contained within my small family unit of other necromancers and the nearby town that embraced us as protectors and providers; priests and priestesses of the land, of the living and the dead.

When I had been asked in that dark space whether I would start again, I didn’t consider whether I would be a friendly, outgoing person. Was I ever? I try to think back over all the different social exchanges I’ve had up until this point, but all I can remember are the dark days of war. I certainly can’t remember my life before the war, or how I interacted with other people. I just remember the disappointment of seeing my family turning against me, of the lifeless eyes of the soldiers slain on the battlefield, of the billowing flags of the enemy. Of being hidden away in back rooms by sympathetic families, avoiding the new, established army.

I can’t remember if I smiled before all of that. I must have been a smiler. Certainly, I’ve smiled in the last few days; and in the last day those smiles had been authentic. But dealing with… well… dead people was a lot easier than dealing with the living. I could always put the dead back to sleep. It’s frowned upon in all thirty-four provinces to do so with the living.

I make an executive decision to cut around the town toward the rhythmic sound of the blacksmith. Certainly he’d have nails.

Or.

She.

I skid to a stop at the edge of the blacksmith’s yard at the sight of the slim woman with chorded arm muscles and dirty face. She pauses in her swing to look up at me. “Oy, give me a bit, I’ll be right with you.”

I nod and wander into the yard, taking it as an invitation to enter through the small wooden fence into the small yard. The heat of the forge radiates all the way to the edge of the yard, and I lean into it. The hike down the mountain had cooled my extremities, and I had long forgotten what blood felt like. Horseshoes hang from the ceiling, and tools are displayed on small metal shelves that line each wall of the open-air shop.

Her anvil is well-worn, and her forehead is slick with grime and sweat. Eventually, she quenches the project she’s working on and sets it to the side, tearing off her gloves and stepping over. “What can I do you for?” she asks, voice low and husky. “You’re the new girl, right?”

I stare at her for a half-beat, before I realize she’s addressing me. I kick myself mentally, Who else would she be talking to? “Erm. Right. That’s me, I wanted to get some nails and… um,” play it cool. “A plow.”

She regards me, green eyes flickering over me, taking in the height of me. “Sure,” she says. “Nails are no problem, I can sell you thirty now for a reasonable price, but the plow…”

I nod and quickly interject: “That doesn’t need to happen right away. As it is, I’ve got about two rows plowed and–” I was rambling. She doesn’t seem to mind, her lips quirking up a little.

“No, I meant, I think I have one in the back, but I wouldn’t charge you anything for it,” she smiled. “I’m Haven, what’s your name?” She says her name as though it is meant to reassure me, as though I’m an anxious prairie dog who has only just stuck its head out of its hole for the first time in the season. I don’t mean to feel grateful for it, I didn't know I would be, but I am anyways.

“Oh, that would be… good. Thank you. I’m Sybil.”

“How is the farm?” Haven turns away from me, aiming to continue conversing lest I disappear on her. She isn’t wrong, I’ve already dug my fingers into my coin purse with the intent to dapple them on the workbench and vanish the moment the nails are in my possession.

“Easy going so far, the land is very welcoming.” I tell her, thinking of the friends I’ve recently raised–or made. A little of both.

“Hang on,” Haven says and she disappears into the back of the forge and returns with a mesh bag filled with nails and tugging along a plow. She picks up the conversation as if she hadn’t disappeared for all of two minutes. “Is that right? I heard from the previous trial-farmers that the land isn’t forgiving at all. And the last few kept digging up bones.”

“Oh, well.” I wonder if she’d have known the previous owner, the necromancer that had come before me. “I guess it’s not too different from the land I used to work back home,” I shrug.

“Bones and all?” She smiles, taking the coins I offer her. “Let me get you a wheelbarrow for the plow, unless you know someone who can bring it to you?”

I return her smile. It feels like the right thing to do. “Yes, I think the wheelbarrow will be fine.” Then I reluctantly and anxiously ask: “I don’t suppose you know a necromancer that can help me commit them?”

I watch her face carefully, but she gives nothing away, only shakes her head. “The last necromancer lived here before I did,” she tells me.

She doesn’t elaborate, so I continue the line. I tap my chin in faux thought. “Do you know what happened to them? Run off?”

“Oh, gods no. Everyone here is very friendly, no matter their religious affiliations–most of the folks here are Flor devotees, if it matters.” She shook her head, “I couldn’t say, I just know that he used to own the place before.”

The name rings a bell, and I’m momentarily distracted. Flor. Flor is the northern god of the forest; of fertility and pine and life, of mushrooms and carrion and death. It was a local god–and an old one. Neither male nor female, but gathering the aspects of each when they suited them best. During the wars of my past life, there had been rumors that the god had made an appearance to the north, rallying their own troops to join, but the rumors had fizzled out once the invading empire had breached the border. I always thought it strange to hear of an ancient god rousing from their sleep to deal in the matters of mortals.

In any case.

I gather up the handles of the wheelbarrow that Haven offers me and nod at her. “Well, if you hear anything about a necromancer, please let me know?”

“Sure thing–do you want some help with the plow?” Haven looks concerned. I don’t blame her, my arms look noodly.

I shake my head. “If anything I’ll just take some extra breaks along the way. Oh–” I turn back to her. “Roof–roofing.” I almost forgot. Willard and Rod would have been so upset: for me hiking the plow up to the farm on my own, and forgetting the roofing.

“Oh, yeah, I don’t do a lot of that. Most of our roofs are thatched over wood.”

“Right.”

“But I know someone who can. Do you want me to send them up your way?”

I think about it. “Sure. I’ll be back in town in two days, too,” I tell her, committing myself to following through on the pseudo-promise.

“I’ll have them meet with you, if they’re interested. Drinks? Lunch?” She tilts her head, a gleam in her eyes.

“Yes, that’ll be fine.” Discomfort writhes up my spine, but I ignore it. “Thank you, Haven.”

“Any time, Sybil. I look forward to getting to know you.”

I nod and start trundling my fare away from the blacksmith, taking them up the side road. Her words echo in my head and I realize that the tone sounded genuine: she did want to get to know me.