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infinitelyalright · 1 month ago

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Snow White and the Fae Co-Op

Part 5: An Autonomous Collective

Previous Parts: 1, 2, 3, 4

Masterpost

Of course I know where we're going. Circling around the same block four times and threading through the park twice is part of it. Besides, I'm basically at the best part, which is me and the guys, obviously.

Okay I mean it's not the best part for Snow, because she's running for her life with no fucking idea where to go through a dark forest right now, she is having a bad time, but then the best part is when she meets me and the guys, so I'm going to take a quick aside here to talk about how our operation worked at the time.

Okay, remember how I mentioned earlier that me and my guys kind of got compared to the mob? Well... there's a reason for that. See, there was a time when the balance between human and fae kingdoms was maintained by the possession and trade of magical objects...

...and people. Okay, yeah, but our team wasn't the ones stealing kids and replacing them with goblins. We didn't deal in the exchange of living things, which is why Snow's case was so exceptional for us, and also probably why it took so long for the Queen to find her when she started staying with us. God, I'm getting ahead of myself. My point is, we mined, manufactured, and traded in magical trinkets to help maintain this delicate balance. We weren't the ones who made the mirror, that's way the fuck out of our pay grade--but coins that always turn up heads, or a necklace that makes your fuck-ugly daughter the most eligible bachelorette in the county? That was our wheelhouse.

Let's just start with the team.

Okay, so basically the one in charge of everything was Seachnasaigh, the Púca. Tailypo-looking motherfucker, but he had a tongue of silver. He was our primary broker with the Fae Courts, you know, the Deep End. He secured the contracts, talked us out of trouble, kept us abreast of most of the goings-on between the two kingdoms so that we would know where there were demands in the market, and when to keep our heads the fuck down. And if we ever had a hard time crunch for a deadline, the shapeshifting also made him pretty useful in a mine, all things considered.

Then there was Grom Gruach--the Redcap. Mostly just known as 'Grom.' Best at stabbing. He was our security and muscle and helped maintain secure exchanges of goods... and as Seachnasaigh's right hand, kept the rest of us on task because he was pant-shittingly terrifying. Didn't use that muscle for the mine as much as you'd think, though.

The more specialized workforce was split between four gnomes. Dok was an architect and maintained structural integrity of the mine as we progressed further into the mountain, Psellus manned the heavier mining machinery and the cruder smithing work and refining, Appius was our main smith, and Pasha was our enchanter.

...and I guess here is where we get to me.

Don't fucking look at me like that.

"I was the stupid one who could wiggle his ears" is that what you want me to say? Yes, I can wiggle my ears. No, I'm not going to do it now. I mean I was the only beardless one so I guess folks got that right. Kind of. (Not that Seachnasaigh counts all that much since he was covered in hair...)

I guess if I gave the names of all the others that it's only fair I give my own. It's not like the name I can give you is very accurate, anyway. Trolls have a very phonetic language. My name literally translates to "A small round stone being cast into still, deep, water in a vast and empty underground chamber." (Obviously trolls have a lot of rock-based names, you understand). The closest phonetic spelling in human lettering and characters is something like "Dhowop~op~op" and you don't make a normal "p," sound, it's more like you close your lips while pushing them forward and also kind of rounding them out in a reversal of that lip-popping sound, and you have to decrease the volume of your voice on the second and third 'ops.' Like an echo! You don't have to--

Yeah no, you didn't get it.

Just--

No, that wasn't it, either. It's basically a sound effect.

Okay, that was closer, but please, for both our sakes, stop trying. This is why my name got gnomicized to Dhopi.

Anyway, you may have noticed that mining formed the basis of the materials needed for our operation, but not a lot of us were actually miners. Well, you don't need to swing a pickaxe if one member of your group can talk to rocks.

I talked to the rocks. That was my job. I asked the rocks to move in a way that was polite to rocks, and the rocks moved.

Rocks are actually a lot more inclined to change than most think. The younger ones wish they got sprayed out by a volcano, but they won't say "no" to the pickaxe, the drill, or the shovel. They sing of seething heat and rivers of pressure...the hands of a loved one pressed hard against your back. As far as actual magical gems within the hills went, those were like little shards of wrongness. You were doing the mountain a favor if you got them out. Magic was an irritant. Magic longed to make contact with a consciousness, a mind, not the mind of a rock, and magic thrummed against the stone like out-of-sync music. They were about equally as naturally occurring and desirable as zits to the other rocks. I like to think of our crew as something like... Oxpeckers, or your sibling who pops that really painful back zit for you.

Sorry, am I still making sense? It's been a long time since I've been able to talk to someone about any of this.

Oh--Snow! Right, of course, Snow. She had a rough time. I don't know how long she was running through that forest, and neither did she, but the way she told it to me was, she was running, her outfit got torn up by tree branches, she fell into some horrible freezing stagnant water at some point, kept running, then she made it to our house, and her immediate reaction was basically, "Jesus fuck this place is a dump."

Well, at first, it was like, "Oh my god this house is so cute." And then it was like "Jesus fuck this place is a dump."

See, we weren't home at the time, me and the gnomes were at the mine, and Seachnasaigh and Grom were... I assume either schmoozing up a high Fae or breaking someone's kneecaps. I dunno. We usually met up about half a mile from home, though.

And I know what you're thinking: "So Snow could just walk right in? You didn't lock the door?" And it's like, fuck, dude, humans weren't supposed to find our house! Like, ever! In theory a human could look right at our house and just not fucking see it like the way your brain won't register keys you were looking for on a counter! She literally found our house because of Chosen One Bullshit. She changes the world--both human and fae. The rules bend for her, and the rules we made for our house bent for her.

She didn't clean our house before she passed out, by the way. It's kind of weird that that was a thing? Obviously she called us on our shit about our place being a fucking armpit, but she had been running through unfamiliar terrain so long that when she hit our place she passed the fuck out. Beds were beds, even if they were fucking disgusting. And it wasn't like she was less disgusting, on account of being covered in boar's blood and whatever the hell was in that stagnant water.

So like... we get home and we find a passed-out, soggy, muddy teenager with blood-stained skirts sprawled across three of our beds shoved together.

And because Seachnasaigh has to be a cheeky clever bitch about everything he's like "Well, isn't this a development, lads?"

And Grom says, "You want I should stab her?"

But I don't want Grom to stab her because everyone basically treated me like shit, and I thought if there was a new person, they'd have someone else to treat like shit, so I say, "Rocks don't find themselves in the middle of a field for no reason. You don't mess with a big rock in the middle of a field." And they all laugh at me and say, "Classic Dhopi."

...okay I get why it was easy to make me the stupid one, in hindsight.

But then Snow wakes up and she screams, and then like, half of us are screaming, and she starts talking rapidly like, "I'm so sorry, I thought this was a magic orphanage or something."

And Seachnasaigh is like, "A magic what."

And Grom says, "You want I should stab her?" again.

And she says, "Please! I am Snow White of Temperate Kingdom, and I beg thee for shelter from the Queen."

...and that combination of words somehow ends up flipping a switch in all of us because Grom takes off his crusty scabby cap and takes a knee, and Seachnasaigh instantly clasps her pretty white hands in his freaky-ass aye-aye fingers and says, "Sweet Princess, our home is yours. How may we aid you?"

And there's a long pause, and her eyes flick to me, and then to the other guys. Her eyes flick around the room, and her jaw sets. She blinks at Seachnasaigh before saying, "You should do your dishes."

And Seachnasaigh bows his head, saying, "It shall be done, my lady," before barking, "DHOPI! DO THE FOCKING DISHES."

So Snow and me don't get off to a super-great start.

But... she was good at noticing things. She noticed me from that first moment. I know that sounds dumb. I know she just had that effect on people because of what she was, but I'm not bullshitting when I say I was her favorite. I know I was. She never said it because, y'know, you don't want to play favorites when you're depending on the hospitality of a collective. It was in her interest to keep the peace, so I don't take it personally. But I felt it. Every time she sat next to me while mending one of our trousers, every time she invited me along to pick berries and herbs and mushrooms, every time she talked about her stupid useless prince with the dishwater hair and the bump in his nose, I felt a slice of loneliness, of vulnerability in her peeking through. A part of her she didn't share with anyone else. Maybe she saw the same in me. The Princess torn between worlds and a troll a long way from home. There are some weights you don't share until you know they're not a weight for the other person.

Snow carved out her niche with us, she didn't try to push or change our lifestyle too much, but I could tell she gave her little nudges where she could to make things easier, to make us fight less, clean more, eat better... but we changed her, too. She went from that neat red hairnet studded with pearls to tying her hair up in crowns or rams horns of braids threaded through with scarlet ribbon. She got calluses on her palms and scuffs on the knuckles of her pretty white hands. She could hike up her skirts and swing a pickaxe, though honestly she made a bigger difference at the house, swinging a hoe. She made a little garden for us, and all she had to do was sing, and the cabbages would be huge and lush and green, and the carrots would be sugar-sweet. She sang to the birds and they would shit on her compost heap for her, can you freakin' imagine?? And... okay, yes, with a little nudge she had us pulling weeds and spreading mulch for her. I'm not too proud to admit that. It felt good to make something grow from the earth, it hit different than just... yanking wrongness out of rocks. And there was yeast bubbling in the kitchen and songs being sung at night and in a matter of weeks our house went from a place you just pass out in to a living thing. A community. A home.

Just like how her poisons just turned into medicines, Snow's cooking just... always turned out good. It was really simple stuff at first, but it got better and better the more she figured out what she was doing. And after every meal we were racing to do the dishes for her. Eventually she did set up her own little apothecary lab just to experiment on slower days when we were all out at the mine. She laughed more. Sang more. Teased and wrinkled her nose. Something about her became... freer. Wilder. Older. It was like the Fae software and the human hardware weren't fighting each other anymore, you know?

Every one of us loved her in our own ways. Seachnasaigh ran circles around the rest of us, but he was an absolute sucker for her. I'd listen to them stay up talking next to the dying embers of the fire, contests of riddles and convoluted stories that ended in puns, and a lot of shit that frankly flew over my head. She made salves for Psellus's hands, and listened patiently to Dok's mutterings as he tried to puzzle through buttress placement, and she backseat drove Appius on jewelry design. Even fucking Grom, who was given to looming, loomed a little warmer when he was escorting her on her little forest foraging trips.

To be honest I never... 'got' Pasha, but Snow seemed to get him? They could just sit in that room full of crystals for hours together, her singing while Pasha played his rebab, and the enchantments came out.. warmer? Stronger? Truer? Seachnasaigh tried to be subtle about it, but with Snow on our team, our products were suddenly a much more hot commodity. Maybe that's why it couldn't last. Maybe that's how the Queen found us, eventually. Maybe Snow was like those magic rocks in the mountains, she couldn't not reach out to those who would make her gifts shine.

We should have kept her safer.

We were fucking idiots.

Oh--! Hey! We're here! Okay, let me talk to the doorman, don't make eye contact with anyone, and keep your voice down, okay? Just keep your head down and I'll get us a seat at the bar. DON'T MAKE FUCKING EYE CONTACT WITH ANYONE. No, I'm fine, you can look at me. No, don't stare at me, keep your fucking head down. Look, shut up, let me talk to the doorman. I'll handle this.

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infinitelyalright · 1 month ago

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do you know your paternal grandfather?

#I know a fair bit about him #but he passed away several years before I was born

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infinitelyalright · 1 month ago

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Snow White and the Fae Co-Op

Part Four: Bravely Ran Away Away

Previous Parts: 1, 2, 3

Masterpost

CW for Animal death

---

I am gonna say that Snow gets a bit fuzzy on the details here. I don't know if it was a matter of trauma blurring stuff, or her weird fae sensory shit creating a lot of overlaps on the story, or what have you, but she only told me this part at like, chunks at a time, so this is how I can piece it together as best I can.

She managed to regroup with the prince not too long after the whole incident, but whether that was a day or three, I couldn't tell you. By the time she finds him again, though, he has a bandage over his nose. The first time they see each other again, he rushes up to her like he intends to suddenly take her up in a "Ohmygod you're not dead" hug but he manages to stop himself like a step and a half from her, and he studies her for a second, studies that worried little crinkle in her brow, and also he's forced to question, for a second, if she made him stop, or maybe that his own hesitation in this moment is a natural reflex of human will against that force that made him tear up the stairs at a single word from her.

"You made me leave," he says stiffly.

"Because it wasn't safe for you," Snow replies.

"I mean clearly, things aren't safe for you!"

"Yes, well, I know that she wants to kill me, but she can't, because if she could she would have done it already, but she doesn't register you as a threat in the slightest!"

"Thanks."

"Oh my god, you should be thankful for that!"

His shoulders stiffen and that unspoken assumption that there is nothing he can do to help her comes as a slap in the face to him this time. Humans and their masculinity, I swear. But then there's that iron in him again, and we all know about Fae and iron.

"So what are you going to do?" he asks.

Snow startles a sec because 'excuse you I am the Princess Messiah and maybe also the Evil Queen's heart kinda but either way you don't just question me.' But then she stammers, "I'm--that's--you can't expect me to immediately have a plan when she has that mirror!"

"So... you need help," the Prince concludes.

"If there was a plan, more people knowing it would make it easier to see with the mirror!" Snow snaps.

"So you're saying that you don't have a plan," the Prince follows up.

One thing about Snow is, with that freaky pasty skin, is that when she does that little rage/embarrassment flush humans do, it's crazy obvious. Also honestly really cute.

...I miss our Sentient Duck.

But Snow is still upset. Again, fucking teenager, and also there's all that nobility whatnot, so she says, "I don't owe you a plan. I don't owe you anything." Or something along those lines. Again, she kind of told this part in chunks so I'm piecing it together.

But the prince doesn't waver.

"I remember my parents' faces from before she took their kingdom," the words seep out of him like blood through a too-thin bandage being pressed down a little too hard, "Do you remember yours?"

"Shut up," Snow isn't meeting his eyes.

"I remember when they stopped tucking me in at night. I remember the way the stones of our castle were ice cold beneath my bare feet when I went to find out why. I remember them telling me to go to bed while they pored over maps with their generals."

"You don't get to bring this up now!" Snow can hear the Queen's venom in her own voice.

"You know something is rotten in this land, but you've never known a world outside what the Queen has built--"

Snow abruptly pivots away and moves to stomp off, but he catches her by the arm.

"Don't touch me," there's that Queen's venom in her again and his fingers slacken briefly but she doesn't tear away. A breath seethes between perfectly white teeth framed by full red lips.

"I'm sorry," a lank lock of dishwater hair is hanging in his face, "I know... you're frightened. I know... so much is weighing on you right now. But 'Can't do it alone' isn't the same as 'Can't do it.' You sang your song, and I'm here. I wasn't before, and I'm sorry for that, but you change the world, Princess. And you changed me. You made me wonder what more I can do. Do you wonder the same?"

And all at once there are big fat tears bubbling up in Snow's eyes, and a breath is seething between her teeth and she just tears her arm away and grabs up her skirts and hustles off.

A few days later the Evil Queen and Snow are eating dinner together.

"My dear," the Evil Queen says, cutting into her squab, "You look so pale of late."

"I have literally always looked like this," says Snow, poking at her roasted radishes.

"I think it would do you a world of good to go out into the royal wood and forage for some fresh ingredients for our stores. We could pick our practice back up, isn't that wonderful?"

"I thought you said I was hopeless."

"Oh, but you are Snow White! You are the very essence of hope!"

Snow pokes at her radishes again. "So you want me to go to the woods."

"Yes."

"Where there are very few witnesses."

"Mm."

"And do something that will require a significant amount of my concentration."

"Mm-hm!" the Evil Queen takes a bite of squab, "Unless... there's something wrong, my dear. Have I given you reason, recently, to doubt my intentions for you?"

Snow told me she thinks the Queen genuinely got a kick out of making her lie--of pitting Snow's inhumanly pure and magical nature against the survival instincts of her human flesh. I hated the way her face just kind of went blank when she told this part to me.

"No," Snow replies, "I would never doubt your intentions, my queen. I am grateful for your mercy and your wisdom every day."

"Excellent," the queen smiles, "You are such a clever thing, Snow, it would be a shame to give up on our lessons."

And Snow just stares at the radishes on her plate.

So a day or two after that Snow and the Huntsman are both riding out to the castle portcullis when the prince tears out after them yelling "HEY! HEEYYY!" And Snow's head swings around like 'Oh fuck he's going to get himself killed,' so she glanced over to the Huntsman and sweetly says, "Oh dear--he's having one of his fits again. Artists, you know. if I may have a moment?"

And the Huntsman shrugs and Snow swings off her horse and with one hard sharp look at the prince he slides to a stop and she grabs him by the arm and practically drags him by the stable out of sight.

"You can't go out there with him--" the Prince starts, "The Queen--"

"I know," Snow cuts him off.

"I'll--I'll follow you. At a distance. I can--"

"Don't." she squeezes his arm.

"But--"

"You were right," she says softly, "I don't have a plan. And I don't know what a world without the Queen looks like. And I'm scared of what I can do."

"Snow---"

"But I can change things. I don't know how, yet, but if nothing changes in here, maybe I need to go out there."

"But he's going to---"

"I changed you," she touches the side of his face, "And I'm so sorry for that. I'm so sorry everything's going to be harder for you from now on."

"I don't care about that--just tell me what to do, tell me how I can help--" the anguish in his voice is palpable.

"Prince [REDACTED] of Damp Kingdom," she says, and he stills at his name, "If I don't come back, destroy the mirror."

His jaw hangs slack. "How am I supposed to...?" he starts but then realizes he's talking to someone who's 90% sure she's riding out to her own murder, and he realizes it's not about him or her, it's about giving the world a fighting chance against the Queen's will. She's not going to let him kill himself trying to save her, but if he dies taking out that mirror...

And of course, like a dumbass, because he can't be a macho piece of shit for one second, he can't be like, 'Burr huburr I won't let that happen because I'm the hero' because he knows he's not the main character here. Because he fucking believes in her, he says, "I--I will."

Fuck. She didn't know. She didn't fucking know. Stupid fucking kid.

No, I don't want another fucking round. Can we get out of here? Can we walk? Let's just pick up the tab and go.

----

Thanks, man, sorry. Normally I'm really good with human-dense environments but--I couldn't stay in there. I hate this part of Snow's story. I know it's what brought her to us, but she came to us because she was like us, you know? She was a kid between worlds. No one comes into existence of their own free will, but it's fucked up if you come into everything on the margins like that. She should have had people. She should have had us.

What do you mean how did I do that?

Oh, [REDACTED]?

I dunno, man, I haven't been able to say his name for a really long time. I hate the new noise for it. It used to sound like a sharp note on a hurdy-gurdy, then it was radio static, and now it's been that dial-up... sound-badly-edited out of a film noise for a few decades now. Maybe one day it'll just be that dumb cheery TikTok AI voice going, "Redacted!" Can you imagine? What a fucking nightmare.

I should get back to the story.

So... Snow rides out with the Huntsman, and she spends the day picking feverfew and mushrooms. It's not a bad way to go out, all things considered. Just slit my throat nice and quick while I'm squatting over some thornapple. Except the Woodsman doesn't. For fucking hours and hours Snow is basically infodumping about plants and wondering why the hell she isn't murdered yet.

In the stories they keep saying that the woodsman saw that Snow was so pure or so beautiful that he couldn't bring himself to harm her. And maybe that happened. I've seen Snow turn that shit on and it's, you guessed it, actually scary as fuck. So, there's probably more deep-end fae versions of this where she just lights up like 'Vwooooom' and the Huntsman crumples before her like, "Forgive me! Forgive me, Princess-Messiah!" But like---here's the thing--

Snow told me she tried that. Not like, immediately, she waited for a while, knew they both kind of had to maintain this 'Tralala-wheee we're in the forest' thing, but there was a point where they were both riding, him on his destrier, she on her shaggy pony, and she glanced over at him and 'fwoooom' for all intents and purposes he should be looking at a fucking Marian Apparition. But he... didn't react to her at all. And that was when Snow saw he wasn't carrying his usual knife, and he had a box on his hip that gave her a headache and a weird ringing sensation in her teeth if she looked at it too long. So we're like, pretty sure the Queen made those objects with her jury-rigged alchemy bullshit so that, in theory, the huntsman would be able to cut out Snow's heart without it affecting the queen, and they gave him the added stat bonus of not crumpling in the face of The Miraculous Fae Weapon Princess Messiah on full-blast.

And then Snow, internally, is like, Ah. Fuck. Well, okay.

So the day drags on and on and fucking on. When's he gonna kill her? When is this piece of shit going to kill her? But he doesn't. So after about 3 hours, Snow is pretty sure this is now a fucked up psychological game from the Queen and she's like, I won't give her the satisfaction, and muscles on for another two hours, but then... she tried thinking, What can I do? I can change the world but I can't change this? I can... set bees on him? If I sing? Maybe? No--I can't explicitly ask for bees, it doesn't work if it's too specific--it answers to want--it answers to--

She told me that the image of the prince as that small child came to her mind unbidden then, then bare feet on freezing cold castle stones, his fate decided before he has any understanding of who he is, let alone what he can do, and all of a sudden she realizes that she's fae software running on human hardware and something in her snaps.

And she starts sobbing and blubbering hard. "If you're going to do it, just fucking do it already! Did she want this!? Did she want me to beg?!"

And the Huntsman flinches where he stands, and those big burly shoulders start buckling and heaving and he drops to the ground like a sack of bricks as he hyperventilates. "I can't--I--I have to--but--you're her age!"

Snow is caught mid sob then and makes a sound like "Whugh? "

"My daughter... I thought I could do this because you're--because I can see the queen in you---but I see her in you, too. I didn't think I would--god...if I don't---"

"The Queen will kill her," her voice is still phlegmmy, but the frost seems to be reforming with Snow, the steady resolve. I think this was another pure-of-heart thing--it's a lot harder for her to do something magical for herself, but if she's doing it for other people as well...

"She told me if I wanted to see her alive, I had to bring your heart back in this," the Huntsman pulls the box off of his belt and Snow winces at the full sight of it, "Sorry..."

"No--you didn't know--" Snow is pressing her fingers to her forehead, "So... a heart. You need a heart." She squeezes her eyes shut for a few seconds and then she says, "I can buy you time to run."

And she starts singing, it's a song similar to the one she was singing by the well, but there's more intent to it, now. She has the ingredients, the will, to build what she needs. There's that hook of wanting, that royal will, but layered on top of it is the plight of a father, the terror of a young lady, and the promise of immortality, of glory, in a story greater than you will ever now.

And an ancient boar comes trotting out of the woods. Snow kneels before it, strokes a hand along its coarse side, and touches her forehead to its own. Tears drip from her eyes and trickle down the sides of boar's scarred snout. A few more notes escape her, an apology, a promise of swiftness and comfort and ease, more than nature will ever grant it.

I need you to understand at this point, that Snow's ability to commune with animals is not a special trait of humanity. The boar connected with Snow because it saw something in her that most other humans had left behind.

Snow settles into a more comfortable sitting position and flairs out her skirts around herself, soft silks on the coarse grass, and the boar gently lays down on its side, setting its head in her lap. She looks up at the Huntsman and then flicks her eyelashes down at the boar in her lap. And without a word the huntsman understands.

Snow winces more than the boar when the knife is drawn, the metal seems to sing at a frequency only she can hear. She doesn't look away from the act, though. The boar doesn't struggle at all as the Huntsman draws the knife through the thick hide at its throat--there is a momentary tensing of the beast, but Snow strokes a hand across its side, breathing the words, "Thank you, thank you," and it eases and finally its old eye clouds. Both Snow and the Huntsman sit a few moments in respectful silence.

Finally the Huntsman says, "You must leave, Princess."

And Snow solemnly replies, "I know." A few seconds pass and then she says, "...I--um, I can't move my legs."

And the Huntsman goes, "Oh jeez--Sorry--" and helps haul the Boar off her legs.

She kisses the huntsman on the cheek with a soft "Thank you, sir, for everything," before taking off into the woods, her skirts soaked in blood.

Hey--I know a place nearby, it'll probably be last call by the time we get there, but we'll be out of the cold for at least a little bit. I get the vibe you'll like it better than the last bar. Come on.

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infinitelyalright · 1 month ago

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Volcano stock image source: https://unsplash.com/photos/white-clouds-over-snow-covered-mountain-tLxGw_ITs7k (the image is free to use)

For @ficwip fandom smashup event.

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infinitelyalright · 2 months ago

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infinitelyalright · 2 months ago

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american pope leo xiv please excommunicate jd vance because it would be so fucking funny.

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infinitelyalright · 2 months ago

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infinitelyalright · 2 months ago

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hydra pronouns -----part 2-----

-----part 3-----

support me on: patreon | kofi | redbubble

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infinitelyalright · 2 months ago

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Happy Star Wars Day! I’ve decided to make my Skywalker comic into one easily rebloggable post.

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infinitelyalright · 2 months ago

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The way necromancy works is this: Everything in your body — meat, bones, skin, blood — has something like a memory. They remember, in their own way, what it’s like to be alive. Skin remembers the sun. Bones remember what shape they’re suppose to be in. Muscle memory is more than just an idiom.

The way that necromancy works is that the caster puts a little bit of their willpower into a corpse to order the corpse to remember how it functioned in life and obey. This is easiest to do with bones, which have little memory and are easy to trick, and becomes increasingly difficult the more of the original body remains.

To reanimate a full body to your command, you have to have a lot of willpower.

The necromancer checked the map. She checked the map again. She squinted up at the stars, lips moving silently. Then, taking the lantern off its hook, she peered over the side of the little sailboat.

There wasn't much to see. The sea was dark and still as glass, except where the lanternlight turned a patch of seawater a yellowish-green. A tiny fish flitted into the gleam, attracted to the light, and then vanished into the murk again.

The necromancer chewed the inside of her cheek. She sat down again, the boat bobbing gently with the movement, and checked the map one more time. Then she opened the little wooden case on the floor of the boat, which unfolded into a neat arrangement of drawers.

There were. Things. In the drawers. Some wriggled. Others twitched little beetly legs into the night air. A few of them made noises, which ran together into a squeaky, wheezy squeal of horror.

The necromancer twiddled her fingers over the display as she considered her options. Then she grabbed a few of the twitching, wriggling things, held them in her palm and squeezed her hand into a fist as tightly as she could with a squelching noise.

She opened her hand to inspect her work. She breathed the spell into it, and then, holding her hand over the edge of the boat, dropped the spell into the sea.

And that seemed to be it. She sat back in the boat and closed the little wooden case. After a moment she started looking over the map again.

There were a lot of handwritten notes on the map. Each one was connected to a mark and some coordinates; some of them said, "Storm 1457," or "Struck a rock 1483." Others said "Total failure," or “Completely dissolved.”

The note the necromancer seemed most interested in was the one that read, “Battle of Salzstein, 1501.”

The necromancer checked the map. She checked the map again. She squinted up at the stars, lips moving silently, and then she was suddenly thrown down to the floor of the boat as though a giant, invisible hand had crushed her.

Her mouth opened in a noiseless scream.

Two minds were fighting for control of the corpse; on one side was the mind of the caster, and on the other was the memories of bones, of flesh, of skin, trying to drive the caster out.

The weight of that mind was incredible.

Sweat poured off the necromancer’s brow; darkness whorled across her vision. Then slowly, every movement a bone-breaking agony, she pushed herself onto her hands and knees, lungs straining.

The trick was that this mind knew how to obey.

The necromancer stood, wobbled, steadied herself and poured her willpower into the sea. She tried to make hers the full willpower the thing had obeyed in life, the will of the wind, of the sea, of the rigging and the wheel.

Because of course it had been alive. In a sense, they were all alive. Sailors talked of them like they were alive, gave them names, called them “she.”

Sailors knew they were alive.

It was the cessation of that life that interested her.

The necromancer reached out with her power, seized the mind in her hands and pulled, blood and foam flecking out the corners of her mouth as she ground her teeth together with the titanic effort and ordered it to obey.

The sea roiled, hundreds of tons of water moving fast as something deep below boiled to the surface.

A bowsprit sprouted from the water. Then a wood-rotted figurehead of a mermaid. Then inch by inch, yard by yard, the huge barnacle-encrusted bulk of silt-stained timber rose out of the deep, seawater streaming out of every gunport.

For a moment the warship hung in the air like a monstrous fish held by the gills of a colossal fisherman. It dropped into the sea with a sound like a depth charge; the little rowboat lurched in its wake.

The necromancer released the spell. Then she threw up, and passed out.

———

Later, once she had woken, gathered together the tackle box, the lantern, and the map and had scrabbled aboard, the necromancer inspected the undead ship.

There was a hole in the hull where a magazine charge had exploded. This was, admittedly, fine. Undead men could walk with a hole in their bellies; an undead ship could sail with one as well.

Really, she thought, despite the discomfort the spell had worked masterfully.

It was a perfect start.

She unfolded the map on the soggy floor of the quarterdeck, sucked the end of a pen, and next to the last marker wrote “Total success.” Then her finger began to trace down the page to the next.

And the undead ship — unbidden and obedient — shifted its sails and began to move south.

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