It seemed that the trackers that were after me had been warded off by Garth as we did not see any sign of them after that first encounter. Perhaps they simply did not believe the prickly old dwarf would keep me around even if he did see me. I was indeed very lucky that his ill-tempered exterior was mostly a façade. Not to say that he wasn’t a grumbly old boulder, but his temper was reactionary and equal to the slight against him if one did occur.

I went through a very fast learning process on how to interact with Garth as the weeks went by. In his house, and on his land, he was king, and if you did not listen to the king, you got your head chopped off. If he asked for something to be done, I had to do it then and there. The arrangement wasn’t at all unfair, and so long as I held to it, he treated me well.

Most days I had a standard list of chores to complete. Bring food and water to his pony before cleaning the animal and the stable. After that I would usually chop wood and store it away for later use. Then there were some smaller tasks such as fetching water from the river or checking the traps and snares he would place around the animal trails. The only thing I wasn’t allowed to help with was Garth’s garden. He was quite adamant about being the only one who knew how to handle his plants.

Garth even taught me a lot of things that I hadn’t known before, or at least didn’t know how to do well. This included things like how to efficiently chop wood, or when he took me out into the woods with him to show me how to set a proper snare and deadfall trap. In the past, I didn’t often go hunting, and while I had occasionally been sent to chop wood, that was something dad had usually done.

It wasn’t all roses between us. I was still a kid after all, and prone to seeking entertainment through various and often unsafe means. More than once, Garth had to use the threat of his cane being applied to my backside to get me out of a tree or prevent me from jumping off rocks into the river where he thought it was too shallow to be diving. All the while I would hear him grumble things like, ‘how do you have this much energy’, or ‘you’re going to be the death of me kid’. It was good fun as far as I was concerned.

One day when I accompanied Garth into the woods to check the snares and set a few more, I learned something interesting. A snare had been tripped by a rabbit, but the little creature wasn’t dead and was instead left injured, dangling from the twine.

Garth was quick to put the little rodent out of its misery, but as he did, I saw something strange. From the little creature's body floated a tiny blue light, no bigger than a candlelight. I stared transfixed at the little light as it floated upwards before dissipating into the air like smoke in the wind. While I was in the middle of thinking about just what such an occurrence meant, Garth spoke to me.

“What are you looking at?”

I snapped out of it and turned towards him, quickly diffusing the situation. “Oh, nothing, just thought I saw a squirrel over there.” It was once more confirmed that I was the only one able to see the little wisps, no matter what form they took.

Garth merely grunted and went back to setting up the trap again. Meanwhile, I was busy considering what I could do with this new knowledge, and if it could be useful in finding out more about this strange power of mine. I would have to find out later as there was no opportunity to pursue this path now.

The plan was to wait for tomorrow and hope that another animal was caught alive in one of the traps. Garth was going to take his horse into town to get a few more supplies. That was when I could see where this discovery would take me.

That night as we ate and I plotted, Garth looked over at me, and for the first time struck up a conversation over dinner. “How old are you anyway kid?”

The question came out of nowhere, so it took me a moment before I rallied my thoughts enough to respond. “Uhm, well, I’m going to be ten in spring.”

Garth’s eyebrows rose a bit before he let out a breathy chuckle. “I sometimes forget how quickly you humans grow. You’re practically a baby.”

I felt somewhat indignant about being called a baby, and I furrowed my brow as I shot off a rebuttal. “I’m not a baby!”

Garth just chuckled again before waving me off. “I know kid, I know. It's just that if you were a dwarf, you would be, and I just need to wrap my head around that.”

“When are dwarves not babies?”

“A dwarf is considered a man when he turns sixty.”

That flabbergasted me. “Sixty!? That’s so old!”

A hearty laugh escaped Garth. “And how old do you think I am?”

At the time I knew that dwarves lived longer, but I wasn’t exactly sure by how much. “Uhm, one-hundred and forty?”

The smirk on Garth’s face told me I wasn’t close before he even said anything. “Try three-hundred and twenty kid.” My jaw dropped at the revelation. “Yep, I'm old, no need to sugar coat it. That’s why I said you would be a baby compared to a dwarf.”

“Yeah, I guess.” I conceded that much given the new information, but another question came to mind. “Garth, how long have you been out here.”

He contemplated it for a moment before answering. “Got to be close to thirty years at this point.”

“You’ve been out here by yourself for thirty years?”

“A little under by my reckoning, but yeah, close enough.”

I considered that for a second, and my child-like view could only come to a single conclusion. “That sounds really lonely.”

Garth’s face turned dour for a moment. “I suppose you would be right about that.” The conversation sort of died on that awkward note. Luckily there was always sleep to reset the mood and give everything a fresh start, and we both partook in that soon after.

The next morning came without much ceremony. I got to work on the morning chores after breakfast, and as soon as the maintenance of Garth’s pony was completed, he saddled up and rode out. This was what I was waiting for, and after he was out of sight, I went in search of the traps.

I had planned this out yesterday, and even set a few traps of my own that were much more likely to catch a critter alive. The first few I checked were duds, and I was worried that this wasn’t going to work today. However, as luck would have it, one of my traps had indeed sprung. Dangling above the small trail I had set it on was an average-sized rabbit.

Elated, I rushed up and started to secure the critter. I was a little unsure about this next part, as it involved killing it, but with the way Garth had vehemently described the destruction that these things could unleash, I simply equated them to large rats and the guilt disappeared.

With a quick jerk, I snapped its neck and waited. A few seconds after it expired, a similar little wisp to the one I had seen the previous day emerged from its body. Reacting quickly, I cupped the little light in my hand to prevent it from vanishing. I held it in place, making sure it wasn’t able to escape into the ether.

Now to begin the experiment I had in mind. Following the motions I had practiced before, I lowered the wisp back towards its original body. My hands gently alighted upon its fur, and the tiny wisp entered the body once again. After waiting for a moment, the rabbit kicked its legs out abruptly before opening its eyes to reveal a familiar blue glow.

I smiled at my success and was planning on what to do next when the reanimated critter suddenly took off in a run. Shocked, I didn’t even have enough time to react and catch it. “Hey, stop!”

Oddly enough, the rabbit did stop, standing perfectly still on the trail it just tried to retreat down. I caught up to the rabbit and stared curiously at it as it didn’t move a single muscle in reaction to my presence. With an experimental finger, I reached out a gave the rabbit a push. It toppled over onto its side as if it were a statue and not something made of flesh.

Confused, I simply decided to try another command. “Stand up.” It listened and returned to a neutral position.

Excited by the success, I continued. “Lay down.” The rabbit entered a resting position. “Jump.” It leapt straight up. “Roll over.” It performed an awkward trick for a rabbit.

Suddenly, I was having a lot of fun! The rabbit was made to perform several tricks and movements under my command. At a certain point, it had stopped being an experiment, and started just being me playing with the hare. I laughed as it danced around, doing things it would never normally do.

After some time had passed, I realized that I couldn’t sit here all day playing with the rabbit. There were still some chores that needed to be done before Garth returned, and if they weren’t, not only was he likely to give me a good chewing, but he might even think I was hiding something. Well, I was, but that wasn’t something he needed to know.

With some measure of disappointment, I decided that I had to stop. I considered what to do with the rabbit. It didn’t seem right to simply leave it here, and besides, just because it was moving, didn’t mean it wouldn’t rot. So, in an effort not to waste anything, I performed one last test.

I figured that if I could put the wisps into a body, I might be able to take them out as well. Taking hold of the rodent, I positioned my hands similarly to how they were when I inserted the wisp. I wasn’t sure if the method would work if I just did it in reverse, but I had no better idea of how to start.

Pulling back from the body, I felt something different, resistance. It was like a thin string was pulling back against me. The feeling was bizarre, but when I continued to tug against it, I felt it give way easily. The wisp was pulled free once again, and the rabbit’s body simply slumped down, lifeless once more.

I held its tiny light in my hand for a moment, watching as it shifted like a weak candle flame. With nothing else to do, I let it go, and it disappeared into the air a second later. This was an interesting experience, and I learned a bit from it as well. Collecting the body, I went out to check the other traps, and one of Garth’s had managed to catch a squirrel. All told, I came back to the cabin with a good bit of meat for the day.

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Garth returned later in the afternoon, none the wiser about my little experiment with what I was now convinced was some sort of magic, though none that I had ever heard of before. He had a satchel filled with food, and to my surprise, bundles of sheets, blankets, and clothes for me. The explanation he gave for the purchase was that winter was right around the corner, and I would need them if I didn’t want to freeze to death. It was true enough, so I didn’t think much of it at that moment.

Time continued to march on. Weeks passed by, some slowly, others in the blink of an eye. At this point, I had been staying with Garth for nearly two months now. What few discussions we did have regarding me moving on were quickly shot down by either of us for the high likelihood of me not surviving.

The weather was turning sour at this point. A biting wind swept through the land, turning the forest around us into all sorts of vibrant colors. I had always liked this transitionary period between seasons, where the world seemed to gain a kind of vibrance to it, like one last show before a long rest.

Naturally, one of my favorite things to do was to kick around the growing piles of leaves and watch as they fell slowly to the ground again. Garth would occasionally watch me, smirking and rolling his eyes before returning to another task. He seemed to prefer whittling as his free time activity. It was always interesting to see him work a raw piece of wood into something either beautiful or useful. Creations that he didn’t keep he sold, which helped fund his life out here.

Whenever an opportunity presented itself, I would practice my magic on the various animals that were caught. At one point, I had two bunnies and a squirrel performing at my instruction. It was funny to see the animals playing leapfrog with one another, and it became easier to revive and control them the more I practiced.

It was surprising to me, when I thought about it, how normal everything felt. Despite everything that happened to me, all these new sensations, abilities, and even the company I keep, it was starting to feel, just, normal. I still had a terrible longing for my lost family, but my little sanctuary here was beginning to feel like a second home.

Before I knew it, winter had arrived. The first snow was always amazing, but subsequent falls of the powder were less so. Eventually, the white ground covered in snow and ice became a nuisance, especially if some of it got in your shoes when you walked.

We had gathered as much as we could from the land, hunting, gathering, and working as much as we could before we finally became snowed in. Garth had purchased enough grain and flour that we could make it through the winter, but the tongue requires more than just bread to be happy.

It was cold this year, but I had seen worse winters before, and we got by just fine. There was, however, a notable occurrence during this time. It was on a cold day, and I was bundled up tightly in multiple layers as I trudged through the snow towards the river. We needed some water, so I was sent out to get some with a pair of buckets.

The river had shrunk significantly during the winter as the water froze. The rush of the river became a simple babble, with only the most active parts still having any significant movement. I carefully broke some of the ice forming around the edge of the water and then began filling up the buckets as best as I could.

I had just dipped the second bucket into the river when the sound of crunching snow nearby alerted me. Whipping the bucket out of the water, I ended up splashing the ice-cold water on me in my haste. That didn’t really matter right now, as I was more concerned with possibly being stalked by a wild animal.

I scanned the tree line for threats, heart racing, waiting to know if I had to fight off a starved animal. More crunching sounds filled the air in uneven intervals. Maybe whatever it was might be trying to get to the water and not stalking me? It certainly didn’t sound like it was trying to hide.

Then, from between the frigid bushes and ice-covered trees, I spied the form of a man shambling through the snow. My first thought was that of worry. He could have been lost, or injured, maybe both. However, those concerns were dashed aside as quickly as they formed when I got a closer look at him.

The man was practically desiccated, frostbitten skin hugging his bones. What little clothing he did still have on him was tattered and torn, exposing more blackened, rotted flesh. On several parts of his limbs, he was missing parts of himself to the point that the bone was visible, and his eyes had seemingly been missing for a long time, replaced instead with only the cold glow of two blue lights. Despite all this, he still moved, avoiding obstacles as if he was not missing very vital pieces of himself. However, what concerned me the most was that he was moving towards me.

I didn’t know who this man was, past or present. He was a naturally occurring undead soul who had seemingly been deceased for months. With my back against the river, I couldn’t easily slip by him, especially since he had already seen me and was on an intercept path. If I tried jumping into the river to escape, I might suffer from frostbite, and even if that didn’t happen, how far could I get while freezing?

In a panicked attempt at resolving this situation, I gathered what courage I could and attempted to exert control. “S-stop!” I held up a hand to augment my command, but it didn’t seem to work.

The undead man continued to amble closer. Why doesn’t it work? “Stop!” He was heedless of me, and I seriously considered making a break for it. “Please stop!” This was the last attempt I would make before running.

Thankfully, he stopped several paces away from me down the path. A brief moment of stillness existed between us before he dropped to his knees with a resounding crunch of snow and bone. I was part way between mystified and scared. We both simply stared at one another for a long while before he made another move.

Both arms came up, and he outstretched his hands towards me in a manner that made me think he was asking for something. The way he was now, he would almost look pathetic if he wasn’t so terrifying. At the very least, I wasn’t under attack.

As I warily studied this strange undead man, I felt a growing feeling in my chest. The feeling was familiar, and I realized I had felt it when I first revived my mom. It was a melancholy memory, but a pertinent one, as this feeling was once again trying to direct my actions.

The relentless tug in my chest was pulling me towards approaching this sorry specimen before me. I resisted it, not only because I was scared of the living corpse, but also because the thought of getting closer to a being in such an advanced stage of rot repulsed me. However, the longer I fought it, the more agitating it became.

Eventually the feeling was bordering on painful, and that, coupled with the seemingly passive nature of the wild undead, pushed me to act. Slowly, I inched forward, digging trenches in the snow as I moved. Seeing me approach, the dead man lowered his arms to his side and simply waited for me to come to him.

The short distance between us felt like miles, but I eventually stood well within reach of him. I suppose I should have been grateful that the frost had prevented him from smelling too badly, but I hadn’t even considered that as the sight alone was something that any child would find disturbing. My desire to create distance between us was strong, but when I listened to the feeling, and I mean actually paid attention to it, there was a deeper feeling than just a command. It was woeful, angry, and yearning. All those emotions summoned by this shell of a man.

My hands came up, and I reached for his chest with some measure of disgust written on my face despite myself. I winced when I made contact. His skin was hard, cold as ice, and waxy. It took everything in me not to gag.

I knew what I was supposed to do, or at least what they wanted me to do, and I pulled at the soul inside of him with the intent to remove it. My efforts came to a deadlock when I met far more resistance than I was expecting. Unlike the animals I had been practicing with, this man's soul was rooted in his body.

Putting some more effort into it, I pulled both physically and spiritually against the entangled soul. Why was it so difficult if he seemed to want this? I dug deep, tugging and twisting as I slowly worked the core of his being free from his body.

After a minute of trying, I finally saw the blue fog emerging from his body. It was in thin strands at first, but it inspired me to keep pulling. As more of it came free, the haunting light in his eye sockets dimmed, and finally, when it fully emerged, he let out what sounded like a quiet sigh and collapsed in the snow.

I sat there, holding the wisp, and only now saw the bits of black corrupting its otherwise pristine form. Suddenly a wave of powerful negative emotions came over me. Regret, pain, sadness, suffering. The wisp carried all these emotions, and I could feel them eating away at it like a slow poison.

His last moments must have been harrowing if those feeling lingered well after death. I genuinely felt sorry for him, and found myself pulling the light closer to me, holding it to my chest. Words found their way to my lips, and I didn’t even know where they came from.

“Be at peace and return to the calm twilight at the end of all things.”

Even as I blinked and wondered what those words meant; I saw the blackness fade from the wisp. Its form had become a much brighter blue and smoothed itself out into almost a perfect sphere. I watched with great fascination as the newly rejuvenated orb began to float out of my grasp and into the air. The wisp continued past the top of the trees before it simply dissipated and disappeared.

I was left standing in the cold snow feeling slightly confused, but also somewhat satisfied, like I did a good job and helped someone. The question now was, what am I going to do with what was left of his body? Frankly it was still gross, so I didn’t want to touch it, and it was probably heavy, so I very well might not have been able to do much with it anyway. In the end, I decided I needed help, and began concocting a story to tell Garth as I grabbed the buckets and went back.

The story I spun to him relayed my initial panic over the man’s arrival but cut out everything after that and simply ended with him collapsing in the snow. Garth showed an uncharacteristic amount of concern after my retelling of events, and he even grabbed the sword out from under his bed. I noticed a slight amount of hesitation as he looked at it, but he got over it and quickly unwrapped the weapon.

The whole thing was a little on the short side, probably to match its intended wielder. The sheath was made of richly colored wood with bits of engraved brass and leather straps wrapped around the top portion of it. Dark brown leather covered the handle of the blade with the cross-guard curving downward towards the rest of the sword. By any measure, it wasn’t fancy, but it certainly looked sturdy and serviceable.

Garth was out the door after that, with me hot on his heels. When we made it back to the body lying in the snow, Garth stopped, put his cane down, and drew the sword with a quiet rasp of the metal on the sheath. The way he moved with the sword in his hands made him look like a different person all together. Gone was the slight limp that characterized his movements, it was replaced by a slow and steady approach with the weapon at the ready.

The way Garth regarded the body was that of an imminent threat. Despite me knowing otherwise, I kept my mouth shut to not reveal my role in this situation. With a cautious reach, Garth stretched out the tip of the blade and gave the man’s body a firm but quick poke. When there was no reaction, Garth let out a little sigh before addressing me.

“Turn away kid.”

I was confused why I needed to do that. “Why? Isn’t he dead? Shouldn’t we bury him?”

“Have to make sure he stays that way. Now, turn away.”

The realization of what he was going to do made me feel... wrong. Knowing that the man had passed on, it felt like desecration, but to Garth, it was a necessary step. I couldn’t bring suspicion to myself, so I turned around. The soft crunch of snow signaled Garth’s movements towards the body, and after a second of silence, I winced as I heard the blade sinking into the corpse before being quickly yanked out.

After that grisly bit of work was done, Garth gathered some spare cloth back at the cabin and wrapped the body up before attempting to transport it. I helped him dig a hole through the snow deep enough to accommodate the man’s body. We buried him, marked the grave as best as we could, and offered some prayers for him. Garth’s prayer involved him thumping his fists against his chest quickly before bowing his head. What he offered to the man I did not know, but he remained quiet for a full minute before concluding his prayer with another chest thump.

Both of us went inside after that somber moment. I sat down by the fire to warm myself, while Garth was fiddling with something on the other side of the house. I didn’t pay much attention to him, so when he walked over and kneeled down by me, I was taken a little by surprise.

He wordlessly offered me what appeared to be a knife in a simple leather sheath. Not knowing what else to do, I took the offered tool from him. “What’s this for?”

Garth sighed. “You could have been hurt kid, maybe even killed. If you’re going to live out here, you need to be able to defend yourself. Keep this on you whenever you’re outside, but let me be clear, this is not a toy, it is a tool, and if you can’t treat it as such, then I will take it back. Understood?”

I nodded. “Yes sir.”

“Good.” Seemingly satisfied, Garth stood with a grunt of effort and then made his way over to sit in his chair.

I smiled and examined my new knife. It was simple in design, just a wooden handle with an inlaid blade, but I thought it was awesome. For the next few hours, I simply examined every detail of the knife, giddy at the prospect of finding some use for it. Garth just sat in his chair, smirking as he watched me, and I smiled back at him. I was truly thankful to have met him.