Her cheek was pressed to the night-cold floor of the unfamiliar, small building she had come across. Dawn light filtered through the strange colored glass of the windows, illuminating the dusty, echoey, empty space and her broken bike leaned against the wall.
Memories flooded back. Packing her bag, running away, biking hard into the night, the feeling of a spirit separated from its body looming over her. All of the things she’d done, that They had forced her to do–and then, just as she was trying to escape that feeling of death on her hands, she’d run over something in the dark forest and careened into a tree.
She was lucky to be alive. She hoped that the squirrel she’d hit at full speed was lucky too.
Opening the door to the cottage, vines crisscrossing over the stone walls, she looked up--and flinched. Just outside was a collection of crumbling headstones, weeds growing over them.
No. She didn’t have time for that. She needed to find the squirrel, needed to know she wasn’t still a killer. Leaving her bike and her bag, she marched through the waist-high weeds, ducking through trees, ignoring the prickling feeling of the eager, annoyed spirits in their graves. It felt like forever, but finally, she stumbled across a small brown body.
She didn’t even need to touch its bloodstained fur. It was gone.
It was two days before she ventured out of the building again. She was running low on food, figured she might be able to find some berries or leaves or at least some grass to eat in the woods. She clutched her black cloak around her against the wind, pushing through the heavy doors--and there was one, already.
A spirit.
He wasn’t quite visible, wasn’t quite invisible either. He wavered in and out of sight, but it wasn’t about seeing him--she could feel him, sense him, as attuned to his presence as he was to hers.
Who are you.
“Who are you,” she asked, walking around him to get to the trees.
I’m dead. But you’re not dead, are you?
“No.” Any idiot could see that. Why did it have to be her? Why was she the one with weird death powers? Why could she sense spirits, manipulate them even, when clearly so many others were better suited or more inclined towards the world of the dead than she?
Then why can I feel you?
“Hell if I know.” It came out sharp as a knife, and she bit her cheek. It wasn’t his fault. “Sorry. I’m a bit tense.”
How come?
She couldn’t see him tilting his head, exactly, but she could see it, clear in her mind’s eye.
“It’s a long story.”
Everyone’s waking up. He was shifting awkwardly, side to side. I don’t mean to bother you–it’s just that we never thought we would, again.
“I know.” She pushed at the leaves of a bush, inspecting its fruit. “Sorry about that.”
Why? Most of us didn’t want to die. There was a deadly sickness here, and everyone either got buried or fled. Now our town’s barely visible among the trees.
She gritted her teeth. “I’m sorry to hear that. I hope you don’t mind if I stay awhile.” Her fingers twisted around a berry, meaning to pick it, but she felt the spirit’s hand hovering over hers.
Don’t. That one’s poisonous.
“Oh. Thanks.” She looked around hopelessly. “Any idea of what isn’t poisonous around here?”
There was once a garden a few houses down. And a grove of fruit trees not too far. My gram planted them.
She wasn’t sure what he meant by “a few houses down,” since she hadn’t seen a single other house nearby, but she nodded. “Thank you.”
You’re welcome.
The next weeks passed similarly. She ventured out of the building, found the cluster of fruit trees, and the other buildings too, all in a similar state of disrepair and crowded with vines. She ran into more and more spirits, each responding differently to her presence. There was a small girl, impossibly energetic; there was a middle-aged man, impossibly pleased to make her acquaintance; there was the first spirit’s Gram, impossibly sour-faced (in a metaphorical sense, and as far as she could tell, the literal sense as well), but who showed her where the garden was, and where she’d kept the vegetable seeds for the next harvest in what had once been her home. Word about her spread quickly among the spirits, and through some eager ones she pieced together their individual histories. The disease had been merciless, devastating, and all recalled tales of suffering and sorrow. But they also told of the lively, vibrant community that used to be, festivals and harvests and a sense of closeness. She could see the ghost of it, now–she often noticed spirits laughing, reminiscing together, floating easily along.
In return, she gave them pieces of herself, knowing how the dead–and the living–like to be repaid in kind. She alluded to her upbringing, among the power-hungry and in dark spaces that were never her own; explained her abilities, how she could communicate with spirits; parceled out details of her training. Some details she held close to her chest: how her touch sometimes sucked out life without her permission, how she had been forced to manipulate spirits, both dead and alive–why she had run away from Them, desperate and terrified, like it was her spirit attached to invisible puppet strings.
It was the first spirit’s Gram, for all of her grumpiness, who suggested that she might control life, not simply death. If you can communicate with spirits, surely you can ask them to do something useful. Gram phased upwards in the grove she had planted, fingertips brushing against a peach. Ask this tree to grow better.
She knew that she didn’t have to ask. She could feel the tree already, could feel how fragile it wasbut also, she thought cautiously, how strong, how sturdy. Perhaps she could–do the opposite, push life forward instead of rip it out–
“No,” she said aloud to Gram. It was too much, too similar to what she’d done before. She could kill the tree if she wasn’t careful, and maybe even if she was. “I--I don’t think it works like that.”
But later that night, she tried on the garden seeds, safe away from the cemetery. She touched its surface, felt it coiled tightly in on itself, and tried to tug its spirit gently–and oh, she almost lost it for a moment, almost lost her balance and tugged too hard. But she steadied herself, planting her feet like the roots of the peach tree, winding her fingers around the seed just as it was twisted up, and felt something flow through it, something she’d never done before.
When she stepped back, there was a small green stalk poking up from the soil--and she felt something close to relief, close to pride for the first time.
Maybe she wasn’t a monster after all.
Secretly, the next night, she crept out of the cottage, making her way towards where she’d buried the squirrel a month or two before, unearthing his small body. She could feel the shreds of spirit still wedged inside, and tugged at them, urging them outwards, together. When it seemed she was getting nowhere, she felt despair, curling in on herself in the dark, about to give up--but then the first spirit appeared out of nowhere, asked what she was doing.
“I’m trying,” she hissed, hot tears spilling from her eyes, half-healed palms pressed to the soil. “I–I want to bring him back but I--it’s not working, I wasn’t made for it. I was only made for the dead.”
The spirit looked at her. Your abilities are not about death. They’re about life.
“No they’re not. I was only taken in because I can talk to the dead, and because--because--” She closed her eyes. “I can remove spirits. I kill things, I destroy them.”
Then what are you doing? Are you not growing a garden, bringing the seeds from the brink of death? Have you not resurrected our community, ravaged by disaster?
“Yes, but--”
But he was gone.
She breathed out, hard. If They had thought she could do this--she didn’t even want to think about what she might be made to do. Instead, she tried to weave together the squirrel’s spirit, joining what was left.
And after what felt like eons, she felt the squirrel’s spirit rise slowly from his body. She held her breath, and his spirit moved, quirked his head at her. He wasn’t alive, but his spirit was–and he stayed calmly at her side as she reburied his tiny form.
She could have cried from relief and joy as she made her way back to the cottage, squirrel spirit following at her heels.
One year later, she was kneeling in the soil of Gram’s garden–no, her garden. The squirrel flitted in and out between plants, trying to eat the leaves and vegetables, but since he couldn’t eat, he was hardly even a nuisance. The first spirit was hovering around somewhere, laughing to himself as Gram lectured her on the best way to plant the garden. A few others were there too, but more likely they were in one of the buildings she’d cleaned out. She knew the little girl loved dancing through the walls of her old home, ducking through the second-story floor to scare her mother.
Even as Gram continued on a rant about peppers, the squirrel leaped onto her lap, and she smiled. Perhaps, she thought to herself, death and life were not what she once thought.