The Grief of the Forsaken
Liasta sat bolt upright in bed when her heart broke. She had had the dream again. It started with a boy she had known, years ago, when things were bright. The rode together, laughed together. They kissed. And then he became a monstrous thing, hair on end, open sores, broken claws. Knives. She knew he was a ghost. She even knew his name; Zheng the Tear-Scorned Blade. He told her, night after night, when he revealed himself, right before he killed her.
She wasn’t the only one. He visited her sisters, too. He visited all the girls, and there wasn’t anything anyone could do. He was too strong for the circle of salt to keep him out, and there was no one to ask for help. Not anymore. The Lawgivers’ magistrates, their circuit riders, their exorcists, all were gone.
Liasta shuddered and threw her deel around her. She would go into the hills today. Maybe a wise woman had moved in. If not, at least there might be roots for a soup.
Her sisters were still sleeping when she snuck out of the yurt. She missed her father’s sturdy house – she missed her father – but at least this was a Marukani life, narrow thread that it was without even a horse.
The horses! She did not cry when she saw them, in the valley beyond her little village. They had the shape of horses, mostly, though that one had eight legs and that a second head. Those Liasta ached the most for, though, were not flesh at all. One patch of clover kept trying to rise to its feet, a newborn foal, but it fell to the grass again and again. One made of glass struck a rock at full gallop and shattered with a frightful whinny.
Liasta turned away and hurried on.
She didn’t find a wise woman in the hills. Or, at least, no woman wise enough to avoid the zombie. She heard the thing before she saw it, the noisome chewing on flesh was unmistakable; and she smelled it before she heard it. Liasta had become good at holding back her bile. She came onto it from above and, when she pushed the rocks down onto the thing, pinning it, she tried not to think what it might mean that it’s clothing was Marukan.
The dead woman had had a basket; roots, mushrooms, mosses. Enough food to last a week, if there was water, if the hen kept dropping eggs. If, if, if…
Liasta sat down. The zombie’s mute hand grasped, mindlessly, but could not reach her. If.
The Lawgivers had promised a better world. They promised.
Liasta started to cry.
