The first thing to know about Finngal was that he was dead. He had died the week before, brains splattered on a dirt road by a wayward driver, dead before his eighteenth birthday. Now he lay, swathed in black cloth atop a table of sturdy but nicked oak. The hideous, gaping wound that split his skull was mercifully hidden. Beside him lay potions of strange, swirling colors and swaying, exotic plants. His sister, a lone widow of thirty and four, had her head bowed with grief and dark silent tears dripped onto Finn’s exposed hand, which she clutched with the desperate fervor of those unable to accept their tragic lives.
The widow Macha, with a great shuttering sob, roused herself from her position by Finn’s side. With a bright, shining gleam of purpose or more likely tears, in her eye, she gathered the potions and herbs that had won her great renown in the world of witches. For two days and two nights, she brewed her potions. Grinding small seeds of moon flower and pufferfish spines, stewing great heaps of yam leaves, willow bark, and copious amounts of mysterious roots and leaves. And all throughout this monstrous task she had assigned herself, because what else could she be doing but trying to raise her half-brother from the dead, she consulted a crumbling, leatherbound book. It was an ancient monstrosity of a book, passed down through a countless number of generations and covered with so many burn marks and fluids of mysterious origins that the original color of the cover was impossible to make out. The most notable feature of the book was not its rainbow of stains nor the occasional jolt as it tried to shake its way out of the chains that bound it, nor the constant miasma of black dust and bloodlust that the book produced. No, it was the fact that the book spoke.
And it spoke now, as it sensed the desperation with which Macha worked, fighting against the inevitable deadline that rot and ruin would eventually wreck on Finn’s body. She had only a day or two left before it was too late, even for her, a sage, the highest rank a witch of her heritage could earn.
The book trembled under Macha’s hand as she scanned a page on utilizing the bones of rats in necromancy.
“Mouse bones” it hissed in a barely audible whisper, “would be more effective with adolescents.”
“My thanks” Macha mumbled, exhaustion jumbling her usually elegant speech and noted it in a crabbed cursive. The book gave a pleased rumble and settled back into its deep sleep.
The moon was a great white spotlight onto the black swaddled bundle that was Finn. Macha and her potions stood at his head. Her hands shook, there were deep, dark hollows beneath her eyes, and her normally immaculate mane of hair, the pride of her mother and generations of women before her, was a rat’s nest. The deep mahogany luster now streaked with gray. But her eyes still shone with a desperate hope and bespoke a wealth of intelligence and an indomitable will.
With gentle hands, she unwrapped the burial shroud. It was a richly embroidered cloth, red and gold threads depicting a sun, the village in which Finn had grown up, her by his side, the plants that both she and Finn loved. Tears sprung to her eyes, and she stared at her Finn’s face. The kind, inquisitive boy in life was still and solemn in death. Never again would she see his puzzled frowns as he examined a particularly complex rune nor his bright, delighted smiles as he discovered a new kind of frog. His olive skin was ashen gray in death, cold and unyielding to Macha’s tender touch. The lethal wound above his brow that had spilt his precious life’s blood was crusted over with near black blood.
Macha caressed his cheek with a soft pained smile, tears tracking bright lines down her face. Then the emotion was gone, replaced by furrowed brows and the deep focus her task required. She picked up a potion of deepest green, threaded through with slowly swirling streaks of silver. With one hand clutching the potion and one propping open Finn’s mouth, she poured the viscous liquid down his throat, holding up his head to make sure the potion would make it to his stomach. She them picked up her treasured tome and started chanting the poem of a spell. The spell spoke of the dark mountains and bright valleys, the vigor with which the small streams leapt and danced, the peaceful lethargy of the slow-moving rivers, the beauty of laughter, the innocent wonder of childhood friends. All things that made life worth living and all things that Finn would have known.
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The spell was short for the life Finn had lived was not long. His joys spanned less than two decades and took Macha only two hours to recite. Finn’s scratches closed and then slowly the soft brain matter that had spilled onto the table made their way back inside his skull, the split pieces of his skull were reunited, and skin stitched itself back together. As the spell wound down, Macha’s voice broke as her throat tightened with tears that threatened to choke her. Her hands trembled with the weight of the hefty tome. And with the last word, she thought she saw a trembling of Finn’s eyelashes and a lift of his chest.
The moment passed, then minutes, then hours. Finn never gave another hint of movement, of life. And all the dread and grief that hope had been barred from Macha’s mind by desperate, all-consuming hope came breaking through. The dam broke; Macha gave in to the heart-wrenching sobs of a woman broken.
She woke to the soft sounds of morning: the gentle breeze winding through the trees, blackbirds chirping, the lull of the waves against the limestone cliffs. For a few moments, that was all there was in the world: the sound of Scotland waking. The pain of the previous night abated and, in its absence, she found a great joy in living. She took in the sight of her home. In this brief moment of peace, she noticed every hint of beauty: the soot-stained gray of the fireplace with a few embers still burning amid the charcoal. The dull greens and purples and blues of the herbs hanging to dry along the wall, the flaring orange and golds of the day light arraying itself on the floorboards beneath the window. And then Macha’s gaze came to rest on the still shrouded body on her kitchen table.
Finn’s face was hidden beneath the black cloth, a small blessing. She must have covered it in her haze of grief the night before. And all at once the pain hit her, as if she had simply passed through the eye of the hurricane and all the emotional turmoil whirled through her mind at heartbreaking speeds.
Days passed. Finn’s body had yet to decay properly, and Macha had sunken into a depression, hardly able to rouse herself except to take sips of water and relieve herself. All her spell seemed to do was preserve her half-brother’s body so it seemed that she would never be able to let go. She gazed at nothing through heavy lidded eyes, sunken in deep shadows. Occasionally she would grip Finn’s hand, cold and pale but otherwise indeterminable from what it had been in life, and cry, silent tears dripping endlessly off her chin.
A month later, a knock interrupted the grim silence of the Fairborn household. When no one came to answer it, a voice called out in soft, lilting voice.
“Macha, arr ya in thare?” he called. Again he was met with silence.
“Macha, I’m ‘ere ta talk about yer boy”, he began, “ya can’t go on keepin ‘im like this, ‘e needs ta be poot ta rest.” After a brief pause, he said, seemingly to himself, “It’s not right, this”.
When there was still no response, he shouted “Ya had better not beh working yer witch magic in there. The dead ‘ave a right ta be left alone. Macha, answer meh!”
Still in a chair beside Finn, Macha hardly stirred at the sound of the voice.
Seemingly fed up with Macha’s silence, the man began pounding with greater force, attempting to break the door down. Eventually he did break open the locks and stepped tentatively into the room. Macha raised her head to peer at him through half-closed eyelids. She had withered away in that week of solitude. Hollows were carved into her cheeks and her eyes had sunk into shadow. Her hair was stringy and clumped together, the color of mud. She still wore the clothes she had worn in her spell making haze.
Ironically, Finn, though dead and rotting for a week, looked better than his poor sister did. Though her potions were unable to revive him, they did prevent him from sinking further into decay and he looked the same as he did in life, albeit pale and lifeless.
The man, Gerard, was plain faced and of average height. His only features of note were his overly large, straight nose and fiery red hair. He approached Macha as one did a wild animal. Though fearful of touching her, he went to the kitchen and filled a glass of water, leaving it on the table, before departing with Finn.