You would think being in the Necromancy business would grant you an endless supply of customers. But here our protagonist was in this forsaken economy, unemployed and taking whatever scraps she could get. This time, she had the mighty task of resurrecting a nine-year-old’s dead cat. Business really was booming indeed.
The customer in question was observing her with a scientific interest. Ace could tell this was a girl who’s only friend was a cat. White socks that turned cream with dirt, unkempt hair in a struggling ponytail, and a gaze that was a little too keen on watching Ace’s movements. This wasn’t a mere plumbing job. This was a game with death.
“How long has it been dead for?” Ace asked, retrieving the Bone Tablet from her satchel. It was a flimsy thing, the size of her palm, compared to the latest ones available on the market. She wasn’t sure how many more jobs she could do with it. Perhaps this would be the last one.
“She,” the girl corrected, stepping closer to inspect the new gadget Ace now dusted. “I found her this morning before leaving for school. I think that would be seven hours. Plus another two hours and forty three minutes for me to call you. What’s this?”
Ace was preparing the tablet’s surface for writing. This was usually a quick task since customers weren’t so inquisitive about Necromancy. As long as their loved ones were back, they didn’t care how it was done.
“This is just something I’m writing on,” Ace explained. She bent down to inspect the subject – a fluffy cat with brown and black spots over white fur. The creature lay on its side on the grass, eyes closed, already attracting decomposers and scavengers. Flies buzzed. No visible wounds. The acrid, nasty smell of death pinched her nose.
“What are you gonna write?”
The girl peered over Ace’s shoulder, not appearing even a little bit phased.
“The subject’s name,” said Ace, retrieving a bottle from one of the many compartments in her satchel. She found the one labelled “ink cap”; inside was a mushroom dripping with black ink. Carefully, she let the ink pool onto the tablet, just enough to write a word.
“Don’t touch it,” Ace warned before the girl could quench her curiosity, “it’s poisonous.”
“Sorry,” she said, and then frowned as if another thought occurred to her. “If it killed me, you could just bring me back right?”
Ace regarded the girl. A child. Still wearing her school uniform. Fourth grade maybe? “Wrong,” said Ace, “you would have the Stench of Death lingering over you. Flies and ants would still crave your decaying body. Even though you’re technically alive.”
The girl blinked and looked down at her cat. “Is that gonna happen to Moss?”
With a sigh, Ace retrieved another bottle and handed it to the girl. She tried reading the label.
“It’s a potion to repel scavengers from resurrected beings. When I bring Moss back, you have to make sure she drinks a teaspoon of this at least once a day. Otherwise she will get eaten alive. Do you understand?”
“Okay, I understand.”
“And are you sure this is the exact spot she died?”
The girl nodded. “What would happen if –”
“She wouldn’t be the same Moss you knew. Memories missing. She could come back a completely different cat.”
“Okay. I didn’t move her at all. I didn’t even touch her. So Moss will be fine right?”
Ace checked her mental list of everything that could go wrong. There was one thing left. “How old is she?”
“Two years, I think. We just got her. Why?”
Must be disease then, Ace thought. “I can’t bring beings who have died a natural death back. If I bring a hundred-year-old person back, they’d still be old and could die within another day.”
“But you could just bring them back again.”
The hope and plead in the girl’s eyes made Ace feel sorry for her. For once, Ace was grateful she wasn’t a child anymore. To only begin to experience death and grief, let alone understand it, was something Ace would not want to redo.
“I could,” said Ace gently, “but I wouldn’t. It’s a law of Necromancy.”
“There’s laws? I thought that was just for humans. What does it say?”
“The more a being is resurrected from death, the more they return a little less of themselves. The recommended number of maximum resurrections is three. But even that’s a stretch.”
The girl looked down at her cat again, seeming to deflate. “I thought cats had nine lives.”
Ace didn’t reply. This was usually her cue to get to work before a customer accepted the inevitability of death, changed their minds about resurrecting the subjects, and sent Ace all the way back home without payment.
“You are sure you want to do this?” Ace asked the girl.
She nodded. “Yes.”
Ace dipped her pen of sorts – a mushroom with a pointed tip – into the ink and began writing. Nothing grand happened, but to the trained eye there were the slightest of changes in the air pressure, the direction of the wind, and white noise behind all other sounds. Nearby birds flew from their nests, and Ace knew they would not return now that there was a resurrected cat living here. In the same way that all animals avoided Ace, so too would this cat be shunned. Death and all its cousins were a common fear.
“There,” said Ace, rounding up her supplies. The word ‘MOSS’ sunk into the Bone Tablet and disappeared with a sizzle that was like a final breath exhaled near your ear. Within moments, Moss stretched and opened her ant-filled eyes.
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Ace expected the girl to scream and run away. But instead she fell on her knees and gripped the cat in a tight embrace. Moss purred in response.
“Remember the instructions,” said Ace, “at least –”
“One teaspoon of special water every day,” said the girl, standing up. “I’ll make sure of it.”
“Good.”
“What about this?”
She pointed at the single mushroom stalk growing where the cat had been lying. It resembled the cat’s fur color.
“A visitor for a while,” said Ace, “until Moss gets acquainted with life again.”
“I decided I want to be Necromancer like you.”
Ace did her best to hide her surprise. “I’ve studied for many years.”
“I can do it. I’ll study.”
“My parents were Necromancers, and their parents before them. And their parents before them probably.”
The girl’s eyes drifted toward Ace’s horns. Whenever a human first met Ace, they visibly struggled to avoid looking at her horns directly. She wasn’t sure what made them uncomfortable – the fungi, or the sharp edge curling around the sides of her head, or that she looked so unnervingly like a human otherwise.
And they always avoided asking the question that the girl asked now. “What are you?”
Ace pointed at the mushroom. “I’m a faery.”
“A … mushroom faery?”
“A fungus faery.”
“I thought fungi were gross.”
“Actually they’re really powerful. They’re the key to Necromancy. And they were here before trees.”
At this, the girl’s eyes widened and drifted away. “Even before the War?”
“The War happened thirty years ago. Mushrooms have been around for almost five million years.”
“Five million …” she repeated. “I got to pay attention in science class.”
They stood there awkwardly as the girl dug into her school bag for loose change that was clearly meant as payment. Ace watched and slowly realised that there would not be a reward for this job.
“What’s the going rate for resurrecting a cat?” The girl asked, as she counted the cents on her palm.
Ace looked up at the sky dejectedly. “It’s fine. Consider Moss a gift from me to you.”
“No,” said the girl stubbornly. “just because I’m a child –”
“Not at all,” said Ace, “consider it a gift because I’m fond of your cat.” Moss at that moment was curled up against Ace’s leg, purring satisfactorily. Ace bent down to pet her. It had been a long time since an animal showed any affection towards Ace. She had almost forgotten what fur felt like.
“I can accept that,” said the girl. “I owe you one.”
Ace wasn’t sure what to say to a nine-year-old who promised you a favour so confidently. So she simply nodded and made her way toward the gate.
The House of Slyspore wasn’t exactly a mansion.
It stood three floors high with an angled roof, black stone and dark oak planks donning the exterior. The windows were tinted. There was no lawn, nor fence. No security cameras. No electric gates. Defenses were, in fact, unnecessary. Nobody was visiting here anytime soon, no matter how inviting it looked with its winding pebble pathway and giant double front doors. Not to mention the mailbox sitting atop a long chopped tree, its trunk colonized by fungus, the remainder of its branches dwindling upwards like hands from a grave.
The image wasn’t far off: something dead lived in there. It was situated in such an unfortunate area that no human or faery considered it a home. The rumours stirred with stories of sorceresses and ghouls. Perhaps ghosts from the neighbouring forest cemetery occasionally popped in there to have a chat. General Rayshade – who had served in the War with the fae, passed over some twenty years ago, and now rested as a birch tree – often lounged in the courtyard reading his favourite book with a rifle at his side.
Springtail, the local wandering dog who caught a fae disease and had to be put down before it spread, could be heard barking from somewhere within the House’s walls. Springtail’s body now rested beneath a noble fir tree, not that anyone visited him there.
So and so the rumours went.
Nobody ever visited here. Until Ace Slyspore arrived with her satchel and luggage the previous morning.
This was the House that Ace inherited as per the Faefolk Recuperation Act introduced post-war. The law stated that any existing and abandoned land or property belonging to fae persons, clans, or families will be returned to their rightful owners.
You see, Ace was the last Slyspore left. As such, the House of Slyspore belonged to her now.
The Slyspores never participated in wars and other social gatherings. Fungus faeries were known for thriving in solitude, arriving only where required, and leaving without a trace. Before the War, Ace lived in hiding like every other faery. After the War ended with desperate peace treaties, the world left The Information Age and entered a new one: The Hybrid Age. Planet earth became a cyborg planet; cables woven deep into the crust like arteries and capillaries, a circulation system of metal and electric pulses amid a network of tree roots and mycelium.
But that wasn’t the only connotation of “hybrid”. Post-war, the Faefolk and Humans now coexisted in broad daylight, sharing dormitories, schools, restaurants and even hospitals.
One look at this neighbourhood would be the perfect example of the mess that resulted. Or a few minutes scrolling through social media. Wizard influencers, mermaids in public pools, and goblin politicians were the least of Ace’s concerns. She had been planning on getting paid today. But she hadn’t anticipated her first client in this new neighbourhood being a youngling who counted bronze cents on her palm. Foretelling abilities, unfortunately, didn’t fall under Necromancy.
Ace’s first and foremost concern nowadays was her next pay-check. It made her miserable. But misery was the backbone of the economy. Misery and desperation. Miserable workers were ecstatic with meagre rewards. Desperate families made ideal clients. The Fae and Human treaties may have saved this dying planet from its ecological crises, but greed found a way to sustain itself, mutating into one form after another like a virus.
There wasn’t a day when she didn’t think of going back into hiding. But that was impossible now.
She found herself in a deathly grim mood as she walked down the street toward the House. From yet another compartment in her satchel, she pulled out her tablet. A different kind of tablet: one with a login screen and a financial spreadsheet. She entered the details of her latest job, making note of dwindling supplies. Ink. Spores. And most alarmingly: her Bone Tablet.
Instinctively, she clicked on the tab that had been open for nearly two weeks. She was addicted to looking at this advert: a sparkling Bone Tablet twice the size of her old one. The advert guaranteed at least five hundred resurrections before the bone shrank. She could make a fortune with it.
Unfortunately, she needed a fortune to get it. The selling price stood at 10 000 Amalgam.
A whine sounded from somewhere above – a dog ducking behind a roof’s terrace. Ace ignored it and continued along. She frightened all animals, and the neighbours dogs weren’t exceptions. Even the insects on the pavement beneath her feet scattered. Even humans. Even fellow Faeries.
Perhaps it was fitting that the House of Slyspore was secluded from the other houses in the neighbourhood. At the bottom of the street, next to the forest cemetery, there lived a freelancing Necromancer. Available for hire. Find her contact details on her LinkedIn profile. Terms and conditions apply. She liked the sound of it all.
The mailbox was empty. A crow perched atop it fled as Ace approached.
“I have returned,” she announced to the empty courtyard, closing the heavy front doors behind her. More birds fled in response. The House fell into utter silence, which was beginning to annoy Ace.
She wondered how many people used to live here. There were at least a dozen rooms lining the balconies. Were all these rooms once occupied by Slyspores? Why had her parents not told her about this place sooner?
She stepped into the patch of afternoon sunlight showering the courtyard. This was the perfect spot to cultivate her fungus garden. Was it designed specifically so? Did generations of Necromancers once restock their supplies right here?
Ace could only wonder. And grow a fungus garden anew.
As she got busy with doing so, she did not notice the floorboards creaking behind her. A shadow within a shadow.
The neighbours had no clue how close to the truth their rumours were.