Page 80 of The Catacomb King
“You can’t wear that dress! It belongs to a dead woman!”
“My whole soul belongs to a dead woman.”
That shut him up. He whirled on Josie instead, who was coming up behind me with her parents. (I had seen on her parents’ faces as I left their house that they were equally scandalized.) “Why did you let her wear that?”
“She’s an adult,” Josie said. “She can wear what she wants.” She processed with her parents to the back of the funeral line.
I had been right about the turnout. The whole town had come out to gawk at the freak girl who’d been abducted by the chaos-godlings and come out alive. There were even, I thought, some unfamiliar faces — some gods-damned tourists. I could tell, I could justtell, that they were waiting to see what heinous thing I would do. To watch me start gibbering and running back to the underworld while a team of ten men held me back. Or to watch me claw at my own stomach, maybe even rip out my own intestines, trying to get at the haunted food I’d eaten.
Well, they’d have to be satisfied with the dress.
Everyone processed past the casket to gaze one last time upon my mother. As if this shriveled body counted asmy mother. I went first. I stood there, trying to glimpse my mother within this empty, made-up, formaldehyde-soaked shell. After I felt that I had given it the old college try, I stood beside the casket as my mother’s next of kin. Trying to act like I was grateful to all these people for showing up. Trying not to say aloud that if any of them had shown up over the past year, before she was already fucking dead, then maybe things would be different.
The only one I could bring myself to nod at was Josie.
Then it was time for the second half of the funeral. The bad part. Four strong men hand-selected by Calix — dear gods, were some of them the War Police? — closed and hoisted the casket. If we had had a town priest, he would have conducted rites, but we didn’t, and my mother hadn’t been religious anyway.
Not for the first time, I wondered: What kind of funeral rites did they conduct back in the underworld? What rites had they conducted for Mackr before storing him in one of those honeycomb crevices? What rites would they have conducted for criminals who had been sentenced to drown in the Lake, beforeHades’s father stopped using the drowning as a form of capital punishment?
Then I stopped breathing. Just for a moment. Because I had remembered Hades’s words. His warning.
The Lake.
The inverted waterfall.
The trade with the Monarch.
Sacrifice.
And resurrection.
I’ll See You at Home
Iremembered lying on the grass with Hades. His mouth fully on mine, his tongue on my teeth, his hands fisted in this very dress as I demanded:Do you know what we humans would give to be immortal? I could have my father back. Everyone could haveeveryoneback.
Hades had replied,You don’t understand.
But he was the one who didn’t understand.
My heart began to beat faster. I blinked. All at once the world seemed brighter, more colorful. Josie was looking at me strangely.
My mother’s casket, now steady on the shoulders of the men, began to move toward the cemetery.
Calix had accompanied me to the funeral. He should have been by my side, symbolically holding my arm to demonstrate that I, as the only remaining member of my family, was supported in my grief. But he was too busy supervising the men carrying my mother’s casket. So the casket headed the processional line, followed by Calix, followed by me, followed by the other attendants: the farmhands, my mother’s friends, my father’s friends, the merchants, the village girls, the tourists,Josie and the Stammerers. All wearing black except for me. My mother’s coffin a pale wood.
I should have been next in line behind the coffin. Closest to it. I would have been angry at Calix for taking that spot, if I had not already decided that it did not matter, because I was going to bring my mother back.
The gravedigger, a middle-aged, black-haired man with sand in the wrinkles of his face, had already dug my mother’s grave next to my father’s. The earth was dry and hard. It must have taken him all night. He had also set up a gravestone, which I had not ordered. I supposed Josie must have ordered it, and also paid for it. Probably she’d done it before I had even returned from the underworld, which was why I had not been asked.
The gravedigger said the funeral rites since we didn’t have a priest. I heard one of the tourists snickering.
The War Police lowered my mother into the pit. Everyone stared as I watched her go down. My eyes were dry. I could tell that they had expected me to burst into tears or wail or drag myself back to the underworld. I had disappointed them. Too fucking bad. At least they could satisfy themselves with the knowledge that I had worn a scandalous outfit.
And with that, the funeral was over.
The gravedigger began to shovel the dirt back into the hole. No matter. I waited. When everyone was gone, I’d dig her up again.
A few people drifted off. Then a few more. The farmhands stayed though, and the merchants, and even a couple of the village girls. People who truly wanted to pay their respects to my mother. They wanted to talk to me, too. They tried to tell methey were sorry. But I didn’t want their apologies. What was I supposed to do with apologies? Make these people feel better? No fucking way.
