The first thing you must understand is that this world does not make sense. The second thing you must understand is that you can force it to.
(Letter 1, Paragraph 1, Lines 1-2)
“You look a little lively to be a corpse, you sure you’re in the right place?” were the first words that Finley heard.
He opened his eyes and found a man leaning on a shovel looking down on him. The man’s eyes were gray, his hair was gray, even the skin of his face seemed to have been bleached of all color until it matched the smoky clouds that hung overhead. And he had the nerve to look at Finley like he was the oddest thing in the world.
“Of course, I’m not a corpse.” Finley replied, his voice rough from disuse. The dreary light that managed to work its way through the clouds stabbed into his eyes like knives.
“Could have played me for a fool then. You seem to be in the proper spot for one.”
Finley looked around, raising his hand to block the dull sun. He lurched upwards and found that he and the gray man were surrounded by graves. There were columns of jades and slabs of white marble. He saw pillars of black basalt and granite graves etched into strange shapes he could not recognize.
With a lurch of shock, he discovered he had been asleep on top of the stone lid of a coffin.
“Crap. Must have passed out here last night. Closest thing to a bed I could find I guess.” Finley said, pulling himself to the side of the coffin. “Sorry.”
“No trouble. That man's been in the ground for almost five hundred years. I’m sure he didn’t begrudge the company.”
“He was an excellent sleeping companion. Not a snorer at least.”
“Are you sure you aren’t dead yourself? You have the look of a corpse.”
“Not dead, unfortunately. Just awake.” Finley said, and mustered enough energy to lean forward so that he could massage his temples. His mouth tasted like sand, and every breath roiled the acid storm in his stomach. But that was typical of his wakeups lately.
“I’m talking about how you’re dressed, boy.”
“What’s wrong with how I’m dressed?”
“Looks like something only the dead would be caught in.”
Finley looked down at his clothes. “What’s your problem? It’s a new suit. A little crumpled, sure, but still dashing overall.” Finley said, turning to face the gravedigger, and for the first time he looked at what the man was wearing. While the man’s skin and hair were the gray of rain clouds, his clothes were as vivid and multi-hued as a rainbow. It was an assault of color, a riot of shades and tints so that he looked like he was made of stained glass.
“You look like a fool, boy, that’s all I’m saying. Foolish to dress in such drabs, even more foolish to fall asleep here. Especially today.” The gravedigger nodded to a spot behind Finley.
He turned and saw what he was interrupting. They were burying someone at the edge of the graveyard. A crowd of mourners stood around the hole in the ground, they too dressed in the gaudy and dizzying colors of the gravedigger. A woman was conducting a service, and she alone was dressed in a robe of a single color, a deep red.
He could not see the body, but he could see the scandalized looks that the crowd sent his way. The overwhelming strength of his own jackassery overpowered his stupor for a moment, and with a burst of speed he slipped off the tomb and hid behind the gravedigger to avoid the hateful glares.
“You couldn’t have said anything sooner?”
“I’ve always avoided confronting madmen if I can help it.”
“I’m not mad.”
“Yet your behavior and your dress say otherwise.” The gravedigger mused. “Did you caper here after a show or something, jester boy? Or did the voices in your head lure you here?”
“Don’t be a jerk. I’ll have you know I was here last night for a funeral - not my own!” Finley added when he saw the look of triumph in the other man’s eyes. “A funeral for a friend. We all came back afterwards, but the rest of the night is a blur.”
“That friend another one of your band of clowns?”
“If I was a clown I would find you funny. Have you seen anyone else lying around here?”
“Just the dead. No one else has been foolish enough to fall asleep here during the funeral of a warden.”
“What’s a warden?”
“You leave your brains on the tomb?”
“I wish I had. Who’s the person being buried over there?” Finley said, emerging from behind the gravedigger to stand beside him. The funeral across from them had continued, with only the occasional hateful glare thrown at the intruder.
“Just who I said. One of the city wardens. Got crushed during that bolthead riot a few weeks back. They’re giving her a hero’s funeral. I’m sure they won’t mind you intruding though, the wardens are such a forgiving lot.” And though Finley only understood half of the words, he recognized the sarcasm in the gravedigger’s voice.
Finley sucked in a breath to demand explanation for the strange words, but the gravedigger spoke again before Finley could.
“It’s starting.” He said, looking up into the sky.
Finley’s head tilted up and his stomach sank to his shoes as he saw the stars fall to earth.
They were delicate pinpricks of light at first, hot balls of fire a very safe hundred lightyears away. Then they exploded in size, growing larger and larger until it seemed the sky was choked with stars rushing to join the funeral of the warden. A blinding flash of light ripped through the early morning fog as Finley ducked behind the tombstone.
He waited, expecting to hear the thunder of impact, but nothing happened. He peeked over the stone and saw a field of dancing stars among the graves.
And they looked like flowers.
Finley’s eyes began to adjust to their glow and saw that what he first took for massive falling stars were in fact only the size of light bulbs. They had large white petals that glowed with brilliant light, and within the center of the petals there was darkness where the light did not shine. Veins of delicate black threading the petals like spiderwebs.
“What the hell?”
“Poor choice of words.” The grave digger replied.
The glowing flowers drifted along, ducking underneath the legs or passing beside the arms of the mourners, until they stopped amongst their silent ranks as if they too were part of the service. But it seemed the mourners could not touch them. Finley watched as a small child reached out a grubby fist for one of the glowing flowers. As her hand grasped at the flower, it vanished from view. The others remained, still glowing, but solemn.
“Maybe I really did leave my brain on that tombstone.” Finley whispered.
“You never been to a funeral before?”
“Not one of these. What are those things?”
“Ghostlights. You only really see them at funerals or in hospitals. They’re just little watchers. Some think they’re Guardians of the other side, or that they ferry the souls of the dead, but I think that’s all bunk. Ghostlights seem more like death voyeurs to me. They’ll be gone in a moment. They never hang around for long after the burial.”
“Why are you acting like falling stars are normal? Where the hell are we?” Finley said, gripping the man by the shoulders and spinning him around to face him. “Where have you taken me?”
The gravedigger met his eyes, not a trace of concern on his face. “You’re in Oshroar, city of Ghostlights and Guardians. And I haven’t taken you anywhere. You woke up on my graves, remember?”
“Where is Huck’s grave then, huh? That’s where I was last night.”
“I just dig them, son. I don’t worry about their names.”
“We buried him last night!”
“Only one I’ve dug in days is for the warden back there. And her name wasn’t Huck. You sure you know where you are, boy?”
Finley dropped him, stung by the man’s words. He looked beyond the boundaries of the graveyard. There was no rumble of cars stuck in traffic, no screech of tires or honking horns. There were no roads at all in fact, nor were their telephone poles, and planes flying overhead. The three rivers of his home were gone, and all the boats that swam on them. It was all gone, and it was all different.
Beyond the graveyard he could see a city made of stone with towers that choked the sky. Each building seemed to have a crown or a spire upon it, as if they were competing to be the first to touch the clouds. The towers glowed with copper and brass, or shone with spires of silver and gold, each shimmering in the sky. The towers themselves were made of a deep green stone decorated with large whorls and eddies, and as the sun rose behind Finley the city began to look like a wave about to crest, only seconds away from crashing down upon him.
The city slept in the shadow of an unknown mountain, a vast and jagged thing that loomed over the city’s spires. But when his eyes focused on the ancient lines of the mountain he lost his breath.
It was not a mountain, but a monument. A massive stone carving of a man who rested on the mountain like a jagged throne. It towered alone above the city, its arms encircling a place that was unmistakably his.
Behind this immense figure and the city it held in its arms, the horizon was in motion.
The world could not seem to make up its mind on what belonged at the edge of the plains. For a moment it was a mountain range, and then a desert moved in to replace it as the mountain range slid away, and then the desert retreated as an ocean took its place. It changed again and again, but the city and statue stood still as the world moved around it.
Finley’s mouth began to tremble, and his hands went cold. He thought of a child playing with his toys in front of a flickering television screen, and, without meaning to, he began to laugh.
The laugh ripped through his body like a shiver, leaving him gasping for air. The gravedigger reeled away from him, finally an expression of surprise replacing his look of condescension, but Finley could not stop laughing. Even as the crowd turned from the burial to see the madman who had intruded upon their service, he could not stop his wild cries.
The crowd was muttering now, the faces shifting from mourning to anger. But it seemed the Ghostlights did not share that feeling. They rushed to his side, twirling around him like fireflies. And Finley felt his laughter leak away, entranced by the strange floating flowers. As they spun they started to fade away. The lights inside their petals dimmed and dimmed until the Ghostlights vanished from view and Finley stood once more alone.
He looked up and saw the advancing crowd. There was a man leading them with the unmistakable look of power to him. He swaggered forward, his jaw jumping with anger, his hands reaching for a weapon that was not there, removed for the funeral.
“Oh, wardens are cops, aren’t they? That figures.” Finley felt strangely uncaring about the approaching pissed off wardens. He chalked that up to shock. After all, he had had a very eventful morning. He straightened his suit as they approached. “Hold my tombstone for me, sir. I hope to be back asleep on it soon.”
“Aye. Whatever you want.” The gravedigger said, his face slack with surprise as he pointed a quivering finger at Finley’s chest. “You seem to have picked up a passenger, by the way.”
Finley looked down. One of the Ghostlights had not vanished with the others. This one gave off much less light than its fellows. The dark veins inside its glowing petals were larger and more widespread, like a negative copy of the flowers that had disappeared.
It sat, perched on Finley’s lapel, like a carnation in his buttonhole. It nuzzled into his chest, making itself comfortable before stilling in place. Its light dimmed, until it was as low as the light of a guttering candle. Its petals rose and fell, rose and fell.
It had fallen asleep on his chest.
Finley looked up to face the gravedigger. He could see the wardens over the man’s shoulder, growing closer and closer, arms already reaching for Finley. “I thought you said they don’t touch people?”
“They don’t.”
“And that they don’t stick around?”
“They don’t do that either.”
“I guess I’m special then.” Finley said, his voice light and airy even as his mind swirled with shock at his strange morning.
Then they arrested him, and the flower too.