Jorun dropped the book on his chest and rubbed his eyes. He had been staring at a page, trying to figure out what it meant, and failing completely.

“Someone is coming.” Latty spoke into the silence.

Jorun hastily closed the book, “How long?”

As he spoke he lifted up the pillow, looking for a spot that would conceal the book.

“They aren’t very close. Most of the men are sleeping, and the women were down at a house near the end of the village. One of them is bringing a pot this direction, and I assume it is for you.”

Lowering the pillow and he got out of bed and began working on getting it back into his pack. It didn’t take that long, but it was extremely annoying and he wished that he had a better place to put it without fear of someone discovering it.

“Having fun?” He asked Latty as he moved objects out of the pack.

“Oh, yes! There are so many people here that it feels like a completely different world.” Latty drifted properly into the room. Jorun had noticed that she had a habit of turning blueish when she passed through a wall or object.

She watched him pack his back, “The people here are all so interesting. It feels like my home when I was a kid.”

The small ghost of a child raised a finger to it’s phantom chin, “I suppose I should say when I was alive.”

Jorun got the book shoved in and began to put everything back into place, “Go check on the lady for me.”

She didn’t respond and he couldn’t see her, so he assumed that she had done as he asked. She could move incredibly fast when she wanted to.

“She’s definitely coming here.”

Jorun climbed into bed and thought about putting the cover back on, but it was way too hot for that. So he decided against it. And just focused on getting comfortable. With as soft a bed as it was, it wasn’t that difficult.

After a minute there was a gentle knock on the door.

“Excuse me,” A sweet voice spoke up, “Can I come in?”

“Yes.”

The door opened and a plump lady walked in. She had bright red cheeks and looked like she was going to burst into a smile at any moment. Latty had said she was carrying a pot. She actually was holding a tray with several bowls and plates on it. He made a mental note to ask Latty if she understood the difference or if she couldn’t tell. It seemed pretty obvious to him, but he had noticed that she struggled with certain details when they had crossed the waste.

It wouldn’t hurt to learn if she what was causing this strange behavior.

“I’ve got a little meal for you.” The women spoke up. She plopped the tray on the end of the bed and wandered away for a second to return with a stool. She then scooped up the tray and sat down with it on her lap.

“Thank you. I don’t think I need you to feed me though. I am feeling quite fine.”

“Nonsense.” She raised a thick arm and pushed Jorun back. It was like a wall. He didn’t think that she was that much stronger than he was, but she didn’t even seem to notice his vain struggles to get out of bed.

“You are all skin and bones. Now you are going to cooperate, or I am going to do this the hard way.”

Jorun gulped, but stopped resisting.

“Yes Ma’am.” He had never before called anyone that, but it seemed the wise decision.

“There you go. First we drink some more soup.” She started to use the spoon herself, but stopped and passed the bowl over to him.

“If you spill, I will have a terrible time cleaning my bedsheets.”

Jorun looked at the fine white material. He could only imagine how hard it had been to get them that color, and how hard it would be to clean out a greasy stain from spilled soup. So he ate carefully, very carefully.

She nodded, appreciative of his care, “What’s your name? I don’t know if any of those fools at the mine bothered asking, but I think we should know who you are.”

He finished off the spoonful of soup before answering, “Jorun, Ma’am.”

She nodded, “My name is Betty. Nice to meet you.”

Rather than nodding back, he focused on continuing to eat carefully. He hadn’t felt that hungry since the first two bowls of soap, but he also didn’t feel full either. Once he had finished the bowl, she swapped it out for a tray of small, thin white pieces of bread. Jorun eyed them carefully.

“Don’t eat them too quickly. Your stomach is only so big and your appetite is a lot bigger. Take your time.”

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

He nodded and complied.

They continued this slow pace item by item for about an hour, finally she stopped handing him items.

“It’s time for you to get some rest.” Betty commanded.

Jorun wanted to object, but he yawned instead of replying.

Betty gently lowered him back down, and covered him up. This time the warm cover didn’t seem nearly as offensive as before. Jorun’s eyes grew heavy and he drifted to sleep.

The next day Jorun’s body screamed in agony.

So he spent most the day reading and resting.

He discovered something about the book. After a certain point it stopped making sense to him. The effect grew more and more obvious the farther he went into it. Reading from the last pages gave him a headache. Skipping back a couple dozen pages left him feeling a sharp pain, but no lasting effect. He could only understand the first hundred pages or so.

He put the book away, having left his pack mostly empty for now, and called out to Latty.

She appeared in the room almost immediately.

“What was that about?” she snapped in annoyance.

“I need to ask you something.”

“Now?” She almost sounded like she was wining, “I found some people doing something different and I don’t want to miss it.”

“Sorry, but I need to know how much you know about books like this.” He gestured to the book in the pack.

“Oh fine, let me think about it for a moment.” She tapped her chin as she floated there in the room, “I have seen the old man’s a lot. It never made sense, despite me studying how to read.”

“Right, you mentioned that earlier, and that is what I am wanting to know about. There are certain parts of the book that I just can’t read. It doesn’t matter how hard I try. They make no sense at all.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, but I suppose that means you aren’t ready for them.”

“What do you mean?”

“That old sorcerer in the tower. You remember him right?”

Jorun nodded. She hadn’t ever said anything about it, but he was reasonably confident that ‘old man’ was her actual father. They had argued briefly and Jorun got the feeling it was an old argument. A very old one, as they were both ghosts.

“I wanted him to teach me about his powers…” She spoke softly and Jorun strained to hear what she said, “He was able to create great firestorms and seas of swirling sand. He could destroy entire countries with it. I saw him do it to a city once. He conjured walls of burning sand to sweep in and scour it of every living thing.”

Jorun couldn’t imagine someone powerful enough to destroy a city, “Why did he do it?”

Latty shrugged, “I have no idea. He never explained it to me. He just brought me with him and told me it was their punishment.

She paused and fiddled with her nonexistent dress.

“I thought that he wanted me to learn from him. He always seemed so interested in showing me what he was doing, but he would always grow angry and tell me I wasn’t ready.”

A pained look crossed her sweet face, “He said that it only can be read by the worthy.”

“Whatever happened to his book?”

She shrugged, “It fell apart a long time ago. Books don’t last that long, especially wet ones.”

Jorun refrained from asking about how a book got wet in the desert. It probably wasn't a useful addition to the conversation.

“So you think it is because I am not ready?”

She shrugged, “You have read a lot of it, right?”

“I start to struggle with the words when I am getting close to around page one hundred.”

“There is a lot fo stuff in those first hundred pages, right?”

“A lot. Maybe too many things.”

“How many of the have you actually done?”

Jorun started to snap that he had done a lot. Honestly he had only done two of the spells contained in the book. Depending on how it counted the processing of the dead, he might have done more. He had only needed three corpses to perform the first ritual and he had processed every corpse in the village. Some to a larger degree than the others.

“Only the one for you. I mostly studied the books information on anatomy, corpse preparation and basic elements of reincarnation. It’s why I picked it up. To bring everyone back. To help them find a way to cheat death.”

“Sounds like you need to try some other stuff then.”

Jorun leaned back and let his eyes wonder around the room. It was a simple enough room, but it didn’t have a way for sunlight to stream in like his home. He had sworn he would do anything, and he had already done far more than he would have ever expected to do. The possibility that he needed to do more things hadn’t really occurred to him.

The book described a lot of things. Things that easily were ‘not acceptable’ for a person to do.

If she was right, he would have to do more.

He had done what he did because he wanted to live. It had been necessary.

He started to ask Latty if it was necessary to go forward, and realized he was trying to pretend like nothing had happened. He had seen the disease ravage his home. He had seen the cursed towers’ occupants get dragged into whatever lay beneath them.

“I need a place to work. This room wont do. Is there a place that would let me work without worrying about anyone stumbling on us?”

“Let me take a look.” Latty vanished from the room.

She eventually returned, “The house up on the far side of the hill might be a good place to work. It feels different from anything else around here.”

“Alright, show me where it is. We can’t move my pack, but I have no intention of just sitting in bed all day.”

It was surprisingly hard to get out of bed.

He made it to the door, but the aches and pains of the trip took a lot of his strength from him. The front door was slightly to the right, and a small kitchen and table filled the large space outside his room. The other walls had several doors on them, but they were currently closed. He made his way outside, and looked around.

The village was long and narrow, nestled between two long hills. It was at the western end of the stretch and the other houses stretched ahead of Jorun with a thin path between them.

“Most of the women are at the far end of the village.” Latty whispered quietly. The wind stirred as she talked.

“I don’t think I can make it up one of these hills, which one is it behind?”

“The one on your left.”

“Do you know if there is a path to it?”

“Yes, there are two paths. One heads straight up the hill, and it starts on your left. The other one is down through the village. It goes around the hill rather than over it. So the distance is a lot farther.”

“Long way it is then.”

He started walking through the village. It was a lot quieter than where he had grown up, but there were almost twenty buildings here. Latty had seen at least one other building outside this area, and that suggested there were up to thirty buildings.

That was a lot of people.

When he had gotten closer to the end he could hear the laughter of women. He didn’t have the energy to try and sneak by, so he figured he should just pop in and inform them he was walking around.

Several of them protested, but they didn’t do it very hard. Betty was silent, her gaze suggested she understood what drove him. It caused Jorun to pause, because he seriously hoped she didn’t understand what he was up to.

Still he moved on without too much protestation, and he eventually realized that he was having trouble walking any further. He turned around and went back to the house. A tray of food was waiting for him on the table. He ate there. It didn’t feel right, because he wanted the people he had known to be there. While it did ruin his appetite, he didn’t stop eating.

For a while now he had eaten only for the sake of survival. The painful silence wasn’t ever going to disappear. Not unless he found a way to bring them back.