The Friar was terrible at funerals.
Not the words, he was great at words. Sprawling sonnets of unfurling intrigue would readily leap from his melodious tenor as he spoke. He would enrapture the assembled crowd, beguiling them with vociferous language and canny parable. He would express his speeches with care, curating them toward the spirit of whatever god was hoped to listen upon the day.
But that was the trick, followers, a pantheon. Every god was either rules bent or chaotically unfocused, every follower had their own rituals, their idiosyncrasies, that gave each funeral a different troubling flair.
Dormir’s crowd, the sleepy lot that the Friar belonged to, they required that a resting soul’s body be dressed in clean sheets of linen so that they may sleep comfortably. The militantly faithful of the lady of Summer would demand blazing pyres and horrible smelling incense, they would bellow loud songs with little melody and leave behind far too much ash-fallout for the Friar to ever clean away fully.
But it was the matter of death itself that truly troubled the Friar. He was afraid of it, the darkness, the stillness of what remains, the judgment. Much to his shame, he had joined the monastery all those years ago in hope that Dormir may forget about him for long enough that the cycle of death would too.
He was in love with the world of Lamplight. Butterflies would send his heart aflutter; the sunlit dew of a spring morning could make him cry even before had the time to notice how each strand of light played off the gentle moss behind. It was because of this love he had found a hatred in death, and, in candle lit nights of worry and angst, he had begun to wonder if he could convince people that the dead preferred to be hidden inside tastefully assembled boxes.
‘Is he, um…expired?’ The Friar asked with an apprehension around the word expired; the fog of slumber cleared and the ramifications of far too much dandelion ale illuminating his world in a way that made the disorientation of a ride home in a flour wagon almost bearable–if only detracted by his fellow passenger doing even less than sleeping soundly.
‘Milk expires, Friar, that man is dead’ said a voice from the front of the wagon. It was a calm voice, a voice that held as much buoyancy as an anvil in the sea, the Friar had heard this voice several times from this very wagon and he regretfully knew that it belonged to Helga.
She was always too plainly spoken for the Friar to engage with, she didn’t have that sense for wistful comedy that most of the farmers had this far out along Allendale Rd. He had tried to befriend the girl several times with pomes and whimsy, but he always felt that she was just waiting for him to stop talking with the patient frown of a standing stone. She was reliable though. A person that could pull the flour wagon to town by themself should never be disrespected, and in his heart the Friar just wanted to make her smile–he wanted everyone to smile, even just a while.
He had been there when she was born, Helga’s family were simple in that matter-of-fact way by which wheat was ground. Her Great-great-grandfather, a man so humourless that it was noted on his headstone, had chosen their familial name to be Miller when he had opened the mill and the practical accuracy of this name began a line of familial mistrust underneath the use of metaphors and allusions.
It was a simple birth of simple language and was undertaken with such little fuss that it felt more like a formality than a joyous occasion. He remembered that her mother and father even shook hands after it was all done, doing none of the usual sobbing and hugging that he was so used too; the baby was born, there was flour still to mill.
‘Why is his head in a bag?’ the Friar finally managed to ask after clambering his way to the other side of the wagon and hiccupping a disgusted chough into his hands so that he did not appear impolite.
‘I did tell you once, but you fainted. Just know that he is dead and whatever is left behind will be for Dormir to deal with. He tried to kill the new chef at The Copperpot.’ she added with the smallest tremble of anger in her voice that the Friar had never heard a Miller be capable of.
‘I’ll drop you both off at the monastery, don’t worry about paying for this week’s delivery.’
The remaining journey was quiet, the steady patter of the wagon droned along with the sleepy birdsong of the willow lined road. It was spring and the softness of the season’s march had covered the day with warmth and timeless ease. The roadside daisies had begun to bloom in yawning stretch, they threw a bounty of pollen into the air and excited the bumble bees of the monastery’s orchard into a delighted tizzy. A speckled finch warbled down from the heather and landed upon the deceased man’s boot, which now unceremoniously dumped at the entrance to the graveyard and waited beside by an impatient Helga. Shaking its head, the small bird hummed a quick song and cleaned its beak alongside on the edge of the Highwayman’s unretracted shoe-knife.
‘We assemble on this place of..’ the Friar began uncertainly. He was used to more people, a sadder susurration of withdrawing hankies and quiet sniffles, ‘solemnity, alongside Dormir’s house of rest and pray for our brother,’ he paused for Helga to provide a name but her face was unblinking and neutral, ‘the-man-on-the-ground, so that they may find quiet judgment in their eternal respite, and thus be allowed… so forth and so on.’ Occasion having abandoned the Friar’s lexicon, he shrugged and gestured for Helga to dump the man into a spare grave that was kept open for emergencies. Defeated by the unusual beginning to his day, he then made a vague but religious enough hand movement in summary and went for a walk.
The day was beautiful, two cups of tea and a good book would round out this afternoon much more amiably than further ceremony. Bugger formality, he thought, just this once.
—
In a study of fathomless depth, the god Dormir inspected the draft of an endless ledger and watched quietly as the quills of the present recorded history and thus created a past. What was written had come to pass and as the old god scanned the lines, he smiled to himself and allowed for a few drops of rain to fall over a man by the name of Benjamin, who lay on a towel cursed the heat of the desert’s sun. It was not Dormir’s job to interfere with the fates, he saw himself as more of a bookend to life than a god of much importance. But with rain, sleep, and death to compose of his domain, the god didn’t mind a few additions to his ledger every now and then.
Two-thousand flickering candles sat inside their jars and rested patiently upon the god’s shelf. These were the souls awaiting his judgment, he picked one at random.
Druth of the Cutpikes awoke in a flash of light.
He had been running. Just moments ago he had been in the dance of murder, his sabre withdrawn and his mind honed upon its goal. His arm felt like it had swung down with the remaining momentum and, finding himself sitting, the Cutpike looked about the study in confusion.
The Honeywort boy, he had abandoned the guild of Highwayman so he was to be cut down, it was a tradition that every Highwayman adhered to. The retirees, the vacationers, even those just popping down to the tavern for a quick drink, had met with Druth’s sabre in the past. But where was he now? Seeing things with more focus he looked up at a small man inspecting a candle trapped within a jar, the figure’s ancient grey beard glowing yellow behind the softly burning wick. Druth felt a kinship with the candle for a reason unknown and there was a sense of urgency that suddenly tightened within his mind as the old man removed it from the jar.
‘Where am I?’ he barked, standing from the neat looking bench that could have been pushed against the wall of any waiting room drawn across the very fabric of time.
‘Ah, Druth Merrywheel, I’ve been expecting you.’
The Highwayman was incensed, no one still living knew of his true family name and anyone who had learnt of his relation to the popular children’s ride-makers were quick to no longer learn anything else.
‘How did you know that.’ He shouted in fury and then sprang toward the man, the want of blood baying from his lips alike a hound of hellfire.
Running for some time, the little old man and his desk only grew in size. With an odd shift in perspective Druth noted that what was once a distance of just across the room now seemed to be a valley, and beyond that valley the little old man appeared to be quite large indeed.
He slowed to a jog and then finally stopped into an embarrassed kind of shuffle. Sitting back down on the bench that was now miraculously just behind him, Druth sighed with a childish huff.
‘So many questions and never any time for answers,’ Dormir mused while still looking into the burning candle’s flame, ‘You’ve sent quite a few unfortunate souls to me, Mr Merrywheel. And, unfortunately for you, it is now your turn for judgment.
Druth, who had paid enough attention to the clerks at the guild, now realised where he was and could only sit on his hands with a frown. He felt like a boy in this moment, a lifetime of misdeeds being skimmed over by a posh-voiced nonce with dainty little spectacles. He’d killed men like him in the past. Smashed their glasses into their face and laughed. He felt bigger back then.
‘What will happen next?’ he asked in a whimper that no bigger than his first word.
Dormir sighed and placed the candle on the table. Looking at Druth for the first time with an unflinching clarity, the god’s eyes, azure and unclouded, cut through the man with a simpleness that could only see and only know of the truth.
‘The devils won’t want you, your soul is too spiteful for them. And that which reaches from beyond the veil would find you to driven for its corruption. I’m afraid that there is only nothing to await you.’
‘Nothing?’ Druth questioned, ‘you mean I have to wait here and chat with an old nonce forever? No thanks.’
Impassion was felt to fall across the room as the once friendly face of Dormir became neutral and cold.
‘I said that I was afraid, and Druth, I truly am. Nothing is exactly what awaits you, and for your every deed, and for every moment of hurt that you have inflicted upon others, nothing is exactly what you shall become.’
Dormir snuffed the candle with a click of his fingers.
Quiet returned to his study.
J. McCray
2022
Sunday Short Stories 