Questionable

“Stress,” said the Knight. “The stress was too much for someone so old. I am legally bound, at this juncture, to say that the church and its affiliates—”

“Shut up,” said the Hunter. “You don’t give a damn about the church and its affiliates, and neither do we, so stop spouting their attorneys’ rhetoric.”

The Hunter held the Old Lady’s head in her lap. The Mourner stood several yards away. The Wizard—for once—looked concerned for someone besides himself. The Fool was sobbing, and trying to wake the Old Lady up.

There was the question, of course, of what to do with the body. I asked (naively apparently) if the Wizard could use magic to make a funeral pyre. The Wizard rolled his eyes and said, “Magic can make sparks. The human body, though, is mostly water. We’d end up just burning her clothes.”

“We need to bury her,” the Hunter said.

While assisting with the burial, for just a moment I noticed something on her neck. The Old Lady’s collar had previously covered it: a light ring of bluish discoloration encircling her throat. The bruising was so light that—once we had covered her body in sand—I wasn’t sure if I had really seen it.

As I began to write that night, I had much to say, having written nothing since Lilly and I had kissed, days ago. I did so dutifully, as you have just read. But now, I still cannot sleep.

Light bruises amidst deep wrinkles. Had they really been there? And if they had, what does that mean? She had been behind the rest of us. Could someone have turned around while the nomads were dying, grabbed her throat, given it one quick squeeze, and avoided being seen? Surely not.

Yet I cannot help but put my fellow pilgrims into categories, as I have done from the beginning. But this time, the judgments feel more meaningful: Innocent and Questionable. And I hope that if I die, these manuscripts may shed light on what happened. So I will write down what I believe.

The laws of probability practically scream that whoever killed Madam Bela was the same person who had tried to kill Father Ori. How many murderers can there be in the world? Not many, I like to think. How many could there be on this pilgrimage? The phrase “serial killer” is one that I read once, and it still gives me chills to this day. Often, these people are psychological chameleons, capable of blending in with society and making themselves indistinguishable from normal people—differing only in that they happen to lack a soul and can murder without remorse.

The Fool: He was the first to notice the body. And he is immune to the Singer’s song. Where was he during the ordeal? I do not know.

The Knight: He is certainly strong enough to have done it. And he didn’t seem very surprised when he found out she was dead. Then again, he never showed much emotion.

The Hunter: She is a little too mysterious for comfort. She knows about poisoned gases that can be manufactured from live snakes.

The Mourner: That veil conceals everything. And I know this doesn’t really count as evidence, but she really isn’t a very nice person.

The Noble: Lilly. Beautiful Lilly. I cannot let my feelings for her cloud my objective judgment. Her father was a necromancer and she certainly has at least some necromantic gifts herself. And I already know that her whole aristocrat personality is an act.

The Wizard: He despises weakness. The Old Lady had been the weakest of all. And he had been going through emotional turmoil at the time.

Even now, as I review my notes, I cannot believe that I am coming to distrust the people around me. Is it merely my overactive imagination striking again? My anxiety?

***

Later that night, unable to sleep, I rose from my bed of sand and plunged into the night. To make matters worse, I could talk to no one. Trust felt scarcer than water in a situation like this. Not for the first time, I wished Father Ori were here. The wisdom of a priest would, no doubt, be comforting. I took a sip from a waterskin that I had taken from one of the bodies. As I fastened it to my belt, I almost tripped over Lilly, who sat silently on the sand.

“You should be asleep,” I said, sitting next to her. She scooted away.

In her lap, I noticed, she held the golden box—now deformed, having melted as a result of the Hunter’s scheme. She was crying. “It’s ruined.”

At first I laughed, thinking she was joking or something. She glared at me.

“Is it funny?” she said a little too calmly. “Is this funny?” She emptied the box on my lap. The smell of honey cigars and charred snake exploded around me. The ashes covered me. Leaping to my feet, I brushed them off, hoping the ashes weren’t toxic.

“Your ‘WANTED’ poster?” I said.

Suddenly, she was on her feet too with her face very close to me—but not in a good way. I got the impression that she was more likely to rip my throat out with her teeth than to kiss me. “Look around. How many of my things to do see? A lump of melted gold. Some ashes. A shredded dress that barely hangs on my shoulders. Oh, and this.” She shook a handful of soot at me. “A picture of a man who was a thousand times the man you will ever amount to.”

“Look, for what it’s worth,” I said, “I wasn’t exactly thinking through the details when I was gathering snakes. I didn’t even know what she was going—”

“If,” she cut in, “you had thought for one moment and taken my things out of the box, I’d still have something that belonged to him.”

Suddenly, I was annoyed. The plan had been a group effort. “I didn’t light the fire. I just got the snakes. Besides, I feel like you should be thanking me. If I hadn’t done my part, we’d all be dead right now.”

“So I should be thanking you for destroying the only picture of my father that I own?” she asked, a little too calmly.

“Maybe you should be thanking me that you’re even alive to be lecturing me.”

Because I didn’t really get what we were arguing about, I tried to kiss her. But the tactic backfired this time. She slapped me and said, “You’re an ass.” Over her shoulder as she walked away: “And a terrible kisser.”

Dear Human, I have no particular comment to make. We morls do plenty of moral philosophizing, but we prefer thinking about big pictures, not small things like “which human is being the ass?” and “How long can a couple that is already having their first fight really last?”

However, you are human, and this is the Human Edition. Humans to whom I have shown this draft often do have opinions about “which human is being the ass?” and things of that nature. Perhaps Lilly overreacted. Perhaps Nial should indeed have been more considerate. If such thoughts have arisen for you, please bear the following in mind: the fact that you are even reading about Lilly and Nial’s dysfunctional love story means that Nial broke his promise not to write any of it down. So, perhaps Nial is the larger ass. You would not be alone in thinking this.