Wyllam Barler

342 - 371

Uravas hadn’t asked if they should put anything else on the headstone—he had been the one to arrange for it and dig the grave, so Lauraline assumed he had some say in the headstone. She had further assumed that if Selene had any strong feelings on the matter—as the most likely to have any—she would have sought out the groundskeeper to be sure it was done after the party left. To Lauraline’s recollection, the sorceress hadn’t found a chance to slip away for that, but there had always been a long nagging fear that whenever Lauraline returned to the grave—if she ever did—there would be some further epithet about his posthumous fatherhood carved under the date.

“Oh-kay.” Lauraline breathed through the word as she leaned on her shovel and looked down from the headstone to the unearthed casket. From her courier’s bag she had already pulled the spell scroll. There was nothing left but to do it.

The sleeping lump swaddled against Lauraline’s back stirred and wriggled against her. At some points it was easy to forget Miralynn was even there; not because Lauraline disliked her or actively sought to ignore her own baby, but somehow, Miralynn had managed to fit into her mother’s life almost perfectly—still an extension of her self. It wouldn’t last forever; Lauraline knew that it shouldn’t, but for the time being, Lauraline had just been grateful to not feel so alone.

“You’re right, Mira.” Lauraline answered softly. “You don’t want to see this. I don’t even think I want to see this…”

Lauraline stepped around the grave and dug out a Miralynn-shaped divot in the dirt she had displaced. For a few minutes, still bundled up in her sling, it would be alright. It was just the moments after that… Lauraline lingered after setting Miralynn down, watching as the baby settled back into sleep. This was an awful idea, maybe only second to the series of them leading up to having to resort to this… But if she hadn’t made such poor decisions, she wouldn’t have had Miralynn.

“He owes us.” Lauraline reminded herself in a whisper and pulled out the spell scroll again. “If you don’t dig him up then all this is for nothing…”

Selene had made it look so easy. So natural. Of course she would; she was a sorceress after all. Lauraline scarcely remembered a spell that had involved Selene’s chanting, but again, she was a sorceress; arcana was in her blood. It was not in Lauraline’s; it hardly felt to be on her tongue. The way she stuttered and tripped through the draconic on the parchment still shouldn’t have meant anything about the spell’s efficacy… She hoped.

She felt nothing even after reading through the whole thing. No tingle the way she did when Selene closed her wounds or buffed her strength. But that made sense, she guessed. Lauraline wasn’t casting the spell on herself. Still, she would have thought there might be something; if not a physical feeling that she was working in the right direction, then at least the wind should have picked up, the scroll should have started to glow, or maybe the casket.

Lauraline lowered the spell scroll to look down at the open grave. No glow, no supernatural raising from the earth. She guessed that one might be hard to explain, with the groundskeeper still lurking about somewhere, but not much more than having to explain why she was refilling a grave. Lauraline’s heart sank at the prospect. All this, and for what? It would be just like Wyllam... Not even an act of necromancy could make him see the consequences of his actions.

The simple casket rattled, and a muffled panic could be heard from within. Lauraline waited. It probably was a bit cruel of her to make him bust out of his own coffin after waking him up like that. She didn’t know it for a fact, but Wyllam seemed the claustrophobic type in the classic sense of the word too, not just relationally.

The wood was weak anyway; wet and buried and certainly not lacquered with anything. Wyllam managed to claw out a hole big enough to contort through in a few panicked moments. His once honey-gold curls were flattened and thinning, darkened and discolored by decay. What remained of his skin had dried and shrunk over deteriorated muscle, patches missing altogether, exposing teeth and jaw. His nose was nothing more than the nasal cavity.

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“You!” His jaundiced eyes settled on her and flashed with immediate recognition. “You did this? What the hell, Laur.”

Somewhere, in all her preparation and half-baked planning, Lauraline had neglected to settle on what she would say to him once she had him up again. She’d had hundreds, if not thousands, of wonderfully cathartic shouting matches in her head, where she laid into him immediately and oh how sorry she had made him to have ever even laid eyes on her, and especially for dying on her like that.

But none of it felt right now. Wyllam didn’t look right. He wasn’t him. And Lauraline guessed she wasn’t so much of the self as she had been the last time he’d seen her either.

“You’re welcome.” Lauraline said wryly but sank to her knees. Maybe it was the spell or all the digging she had just done. Or she’d forgotten how exhausting Wyllam’s mere presence could be.

“For burying me alive?” He spat. As unnerving as it was, there was also something funny about seeing a reanimated corpse immediately so upset. And at the idea of being buried no less. “This is what amuses you now?”

He didn’t know. He didn’t realize.

Lauraline worried her lip as she swung her legs over the edge of the grave. She hadn’t thought she would have to explain that part of it.

“You died.”

“Stop it. I-” But Wyllam caught sight of his arm then, turning it over slowly and holding his mostly skeletal hand out in front of his face. “What did you do?”

“I do? What did I do?” Maybe it was about to sound like one of the arguments from her head after all. “I shoved you out of the way. I told you, so many—so many fucking times—to just stay- You died, Wyllam.”

“Yeah? Yeah…” Another look down at himself, and Wyllam began to nod, slowly, then with increased speed. “It’s coming back to me now, I think.”

Lauraline wondered how much of it had come back to him; did he remember the way she’d wanted to tell him something? Or that she’d run away before she could. That she’d left him to die alone. Fine, Selene had been there, but she hadn’t been.

“So I died.” Wyllam nodded again, with a little more finality, then cocked his head. It wasn’t half so infuriatingly attractive when much more than half of his features had been eaten away by time and maggots. “And then what happened?”

Lauraline kicked her heels against the grave walls and looked over to where Miralynn still slept in her earthen cradle. For now. Miralynn slept through most nights now, but that was at home, in her own bed. Without the sound of her mother arguing with the undead corpse of her father to disturb her. “We buried you here, in Freygarde. And then we left, and we carried on for a bit.”

“A bit?” Wyllam echoed. It would seem odd to anyone that had known the trio back then, but especially to their shadow. Wyllam looked around the cemetery, as if looking for Uravas and Selene. “What happened? I mean, what? I died, and the whole group fell apart?”

Lauraline sighed before looking back down at Wyllam. She was going to help him out of there soon, but first she was going to have to finish explaining. “Something like that.”

The remaining corner of Wyllam’s mouth turned upwards. Somehow, though, that had managed to keep some of its charm. “You needed me.”

Lauraline scowled before he could even say it. “No.”

Wyllam shuffled his way to the end of the grave and placed his rotting hands on Lauraline’s knees, grinning up at her all the brighter, “I was the thread binding that whole outfit together.”

“You ruined everything.” Lauraline snarled, stunning herself. That wasn’t true. She’d never thought that before. But with the speed and conviction it had flown out of her mouth…

Wyllam backed off as if she might actually bite. She really might have, if he were still in range during his next question, “You’re alone, aren’t you?”

“No! Uravas- Uravas retired, which was fine until- Selene is missing. Selene is missing, and I need to find her.”

Wyllam’s grin crept back in. “And you want my help?”

Lauraline looked over towards Miralynn again and answered absently, “Sure. Let’s call it that.”

“I missed you too.”

“No, you didn’t.” Lauraline snapped her head back to fix Wyllam with a confused scowl. “You were dead.”

Wyllam scowled back, but he was mocking her, clearly. “I was in The Odd Duck, actually.”

“No, you weren’t. You were dead.” She hoped he was only teasing her. If Lauraline had thought he’d been emotionally stunted while living, being undead certainly wasn’t going to do him any favors. Now maybe she’d gone and made him some kind of delusional to boot.

“Well, I know you would have preferred some kind of hell for me, but a two-bit tavern and a nagging sense that you’ve forgotten something can be a kind of hell, I think.”

Lauraline scoffed. “I didn’t want you to die.”

“No?”

Lauraline was relieved to see him smirk. This was still just fun for him. This felt like before. She lifted her chin and feigned upset, “It was very inconvenient.”

Wyllam nodded in mock sincerity. “I’m sure. For you especially, it must have been awfully lonely.”

“No, actually.” Lauaraline changed her mind. This was too much like before. Suddenly, it didn’t sit right with her. “You don’t get to joke about that because you weren’t here.”

Wyllam flinched again like he thought she just might bite, but any bit of fear was quickly replaced with concern. Or pity, more like. “What happened, Laur?”

Lauraline struggled for words, but her daughter’s cries answered the question for her.