So, that new story we were working on. (Hubby writes, I plot.) It’s got a title – Dead Prince. I can’t tell you when it’ll be finished (buggered if I know) but we’re hoping by the end of January. A tight deadline, did you say? Well, there you go.
Dead Prince is the story of a girl who brings people back from the dead. It’s kinda sorta her day job. We’re all voodoo up in here.
For fun, here’s the first chapter – unedited, in all its glory.
ONE
An average grave contains about 13 square metres of dirt.
An average shovel holds one shovel of dirt.
It’s dark and gloomy, the moon is full and I am standing at the bottom of a six foot pit, sweating like a pig. My feet are resting on the newly uncovered lid of a wooden coffin, because the Fingers are a bunch of ignorant twerps and I am a sucker for profit. It’s midnight, as tradition and ritual demand, and the wind is howling across the top of the open grave as if it has somewhere to go. It carries the sound of grand ships, rough ocean waves and the tolling bells of the Temperance Society clock tower.
It also carries the smell of fish.
Wigstaff Cemetery stands silent and indifferent on a cliff to the south of Brazza, countless mausoleums looming predictably in the moonlight. The cemetery resembles a city in parts, with huge structures arranged in precise rows and even paved paths for the comfort of mourners. Many of the mausoleums are adorned with angels, crosses and patron saints, reaching up to higher powers. Many more have carefully idealised idols of their occupants in the prime of their lives, begging us regular mortals to remember them when they were pretty and important.
Climbing out of the open grave, I can see the less civilised outskirts of the spooky city. Simple stone blocks scattered along the hills mark the mass graves where plague victims were tossed. Each stone is marked with a letter, so ancestors con grieve alphabetically.
I’m focused on just one deathbed right now, though. I raise up my arms as dramatically as I can and start saying the words that need to be said. I light all the candles and start saying the voodoo incantation just the way Granny Pangier taught me all those years ago in her run down old shack on the other side of the island. I sprinkle the appropriate dust – three parts magic, one part sparkle for effect – into the hole and pull off some very impressive hand signals. In my head a a clap of thunder goes off.
Nothing happens at first. Then a swirling ribbon of ether slips from within me and flutters into the open grave. I crouch down beside it and peer into the gloom.
The lid of the coffin stirs. Rises.
The corpse emerges, although the term conjures inaccurate imagery. There are no hunks of rotting flesh, eyeballs are not sunken, bones are not protruding from places and worms are not feasting on anything apart from dirt. If anything, the corpse looks more like a man who has just emerged a rough sleep. He smells of dirt and mustiness, but so do I at this point.
“How have you been, Oliphant?” I say, leaning over with a cheery grin.
The corpse blinks. I should say the living man at this point, because he is truly alive at this point. Just because someone recently emerged from a coffin is no reason to discriminate. If I squint I can spot a cord of silvery-blue magic like a thread running between the two of us, tying us together. My spell is keeping him alive.
“Who are you? What happened to me?” He looks around, probably gathering the basics.
“You ran into a spot of bother, lost a lot of money to the wrong sort of people in the wrong sort of places. Made some proactive enemies. Although you probably know that bit. The guard had to deal with you.”
“I died,” he says.
“Yes, and now you’re back,” I say.
“You raised me from the dead. This is magic… necromancy!” He gestures as wildly as possible in a three foot wide hole.
“Yep.”
“But why? I don’t know you. I mean I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but when you wake up in the middle of the night as a zombie and find a dirt-covered necromancer girl staring down at you it makes you a little curious.”
“Ah,” I say, standing up and brushing the dirt off my knees, “there’s the bad news.”
“Um… what?”
“I mentioned that matter of money earlier. Do you remember who’s money that was? The ladies really do like it when people pay their debts. And they’re rather determined. Death isn’t going to get in the way of something important like revenge.”
Even as I speak to the poor living man in the hole, the Ladies of Temperance are emerging from the shadows, knives in their hands and dangerous emotions in their eyes. They are clothed in their usual prim and proper attire, but most have elected to slip large, thick aprons over the top to catch the spray. Some of them are wearing heels, which strikes me as impractical, but who am I to judge. The ladies converge on our position and I step away.
“Best let you all sort things out then,” I say.
“No you can’t! No!” Oliphant yells to everyone at once.
I find a nice headstone to sit on, a comfy cheap job with a round top, and stare back at the nearby town.
Behind me, I hear Oliphant screaming and the cackling of chaste women. Knives don’t really make much of a sound themsleves, aside from the thud of a well placed swing.
Eventually the silvery-blue cord of light flickers and vanishes, its edges fraying in the air.
