A Pinch of Salt

“A pinch of grave soil freshly turned, the feather of a raven… or was it a crow? Three pinches of salt, or to taste… uhm…”

“You’ve no idea how to do this, do you?” The question was punctuated with a thud, the tip of the spade biting deep into earth. The gravekeeper paused there, planting the heel of his boot against the wooden haft. “Grave soil, check. We got plenty of it. And that’s a raven’s feather, so I hope that’s what you wanted. But salt? Really? I always heard it was supposed to keep away ghosts.”

“I wasn’t aware I hired an expert to dig up these bodies.” The necromancer slammed her tome shut, drummed her fingers across its leathery cover. Her eyes, two pinpricks of green fire burning through the moonless night, bore into him.

The gravekeeper shrugged. The gesture seemed ill-suited to the lanky fellow, nearly as much as the pale suit he wore. “No need to get snippy about it. Just thought I’d offer some help, is all.”

“If I want your opinion on how to animate a corpse, I will ask. Until then, keep digging.”

“Sure, sure.” He hefted the shovel up and stabbed it back down. The earth was hard, thirsty, but it wasn’t his first time digging a grave. Though the circumstances this time around were… unusual.

Perhaps he should’ve called the constable when this lass in a black robe showed up at his graveyard. He definitely should’ve when she offered him a small king’s ransom to have him unbury one of his interred. But… the constable would have liked to confiscate that money, and there’s nothing so odd about a gravekeeper tending to his graves. It just so happened he liked to do it by lantern light in the middle of the night.

So. What the constable doesn’t know can’t hurt him, right?

The shovel sunk halfway, stopped with a dull thud.

“Think we found him,” he called over his shoulder. “You got that salt figured out?”

“Three. Pinches,” she grunted through pursed lips. Whatever sort of expression she was making under that hood, it likely wasn’t a pleasant one. “Then a dram of oil, burned to smoke by a candle made of the fat of a nameless man.”

“Now how does that make sense? Everyone’s got a name.”

“Not this one,” she said as she pulled a candle from out of the sleeve of her robe. It looked like a candle, sure enough. Nothing about it indicated it was made from a person.

“So… does this not work if someone were to name him? If I were to point at that candle and say, hey, that’s—"

The necromancer hid the candle away with a flourish of her billowing sleeves. “Don’t you dare!” she hissed. “You will not receive a single bloody coin from me if you insist on interfering with this ritual!”

“Oh, no interference from me, don’t you worry. I’m just trying to help is all.” With a grunt, the gravekeeper knelt and began to push away the last of the dirt with his hands. He didn’t seem to mind the way it stuck to his clothes. “I only want to prepare you for the disappointment when this doesn’t work. ‘Course, I’m getting paid either way.”

“Hm.” She pondered that while he worked the coffin up and out of its grave. Bits of moldy wood crumbled in his hands. “What do you mean it won’t work?”

“You’re going about this the wrong way, is what I mean.” He grunted, heaved and got it half out. Part of the lid had caved in, showing the skull of the coffin’s occupant.

He was an old fellow, gone for many years, long since picked at by worms and then left for the earth to claim. It had done a decent job at it—nothing but tatters remained of the suit he’d been buried in, and only his skull could be described as intact.

But hey, this was the one the necromancer wanted. And she paid enough for it, so he wasn’t going to complain.

“You wanted this one, right?” He pushed aside the lid, letting the grave stench wash over him. It wasn’t so bad at this stage long past decay. Mostly just the smell of wet soil freshly churned, mingling with the chilly night air.

The gravekeeper ran a hand through his thinning hair. “Yeah, I reckon this one ain’t gonna work.”

The way her hood shifted a bit, he got the sense she was giving him the side-eye. “Is there something wrong with this one?”

“For starters, he’s dead.”

“I suspect the finer points of necromancy are lost on you.”

“He’s really dead. It’s better to work with fresh stock. Younger works better, too. Say, twenties or thirties, with lots of business unfinished. This bloke died when he was nearly seventy, according to that tombstone.” A meagre thing, that. A random slab of stone more than a marker for a tomb. But somebody had seen fit to scratch a few words in it.

Jebediah Beckett. Died nearly twenty years ago.

“Odd choice for one in your line of work. That’s all I’m saying,” he said with a shrug.

“I have my reasons.” She threw a pouch on the ground between them. It landed with a pleasant series of settling clinks. “Your payment.”

“Right you are.” He bent over and grabbed it, went for his lantern next, then shuffled over to an old hanging tree a little ways away. “I’ll be over here, then. For after you’re done. Can’t have anybody come looking for Mister Beckett here and find a dug grave, can we?”

“Nobody will be stopping to visit Jebediah… but as you wish.” With a flourish of her billowy sleeves, she turned from the gravekeeper and stepped over to the coffin.

The holes in Jebediah’s skull gazed up at her. Now a skull can’t be said to have much of an expression, but she thought his was asking her why. Odd, the sort of things you see in the world when it’s late at night and you’re conducting a dark magic ritual to disturb the spirits.

She knelt down by his side and placed the feather carefully over his brow. She smeared a handful of grave dirt across his cheek, then did the same to her own. Three pinches of salt, tossed in the coffin with him. The candle went on top, stuck to what was left of the lid.

This had to work. She cracked open her tome and began her spell.

The candle lit by itself.

“I call upon you,” she whispered, voice wending over the graves, around the stones, tickling the gravekeeper’s ears. It wouldn’t be polite to scoff at her when she was trying so hard, so he kept to a quiet smirk.

“I call upon you,” she repeated, “the spirit of Jebediah Beckett. By the hidden light of the new moon, I call upon you to return to these mortal lands, to walk among us beings of flesh and blood once more. Death shall not be the end for you, Jebediah, and thus I bid you return. Return!”

It’s not that nothing happened. There’s so much constantly going on in the world, it can’t be bothered to stop even for an anticlimax. The moon and the sun and the earth kept rotating, for instance, and there were a few worms wriggling in the ground under the necromancer’s feet. A soft, non-ghostly breeze swept past and blew out the candle.

Jebediah Beckett didn’t see fit to return to the mortal lands to walk among the beings of flesh and blood. Not even if the hidden light of the new moon demanded it. Whatever the fresh hell that meant.

“If’n you’re fine with it, I can get started on reburying Mister Beckett here. I’m sure he’d appreciate some rest,” the gravekeeper said real slow, moving from his perch by the tree. “Only when you’re ready and fine with it, o ‘course. I’m in no real rush.”

“It should have worked.” She spun to look at him, the flames in her eyes wavering. “Why didn’t it work?”

“See, that’s what I was trying to tell you.” He rubbed at his face, inadvertently smearing a good deal of grave dirt into his stubbly beard. “One’s like Beckett? Old in life, old in death… they don’t want to come back. Why would they?”

“The tome says, well, it says it should work. That’s what it says!” Her voice grew louder by the second, but there wasn’t anybody living around to hear it.

She whirled on him, finger out and ready to cast blame. “You. You did this, didn’t you? You sabotaged my ritual somehow.”

The gravekeeper might as well been the body in that coffin for how little his expression changed. The necromancer got up close, jabbing her finger in his chest, tapping him in the sternum, but he didn’t seem to mind much.

“I didn’t. Wouldn’t know where to begin with it, honest. But I know a thing or two about dead people, and I’ll tell you what went wrong one more time—he didn’t want to come back.”

“And why is that?”

“How should I know? I didn’t get into the business here because I’m good with people, predicting what they want or don’t want. Just for whatever reason, he doesn’t want to come back. Plain and simple.” That was that in his mind.

The necromancer struggled to swallow that medicine. He watched her struggle, the light from his lantern close enough to reveal the tensed muscles working in her jaw, only partially silhouetted by her robes.

“You can blame me if you like. It don’t bother me none. I reckon most folk need someone to blame, whether that be the person digging the grave or the person going in it.” Moving past her, he shoved the coffin back in with his boot.

“There are some folk over there who might be more receptive to your salt and raven feathers,” he said, tossing a glance over his shoulder before grabbing the spade. “If you feel you haven’t got your money’s worth already, that is. Might as well tell me now, so’s I can get started on unearthing them next.”

She stood there and watched while the gravekeeper dumped dirt back over the coffin.

“They aren’t him,” she said, after a time. After the coffin was nearly buried and only a corner of the wood could be seen.

“No, I suppose they aren’t.”

“Why doesn’t he want to come back?” She wasn’t asking him, so he kept quiet. “Is it me?”

If only there could be answers found in the dirt. Wouldn’t that be easier? the gravekeeper thought.

“Maybe he’s happy,” he said once the silence became too uncomfortable for even him. “Could be that’s why he doesn’t want to come back. Found a good spot over on the other side, waiting there, keeping the hearth warm for you until it’s your time.”

The necromancer’s hood turned to him. “Do you believe that?”

“…Sure, why not? It’s a fine thing to believe in. Good as anything else I’ve heard.”

With a final shovelful of dirt laying Beckett to rest, the gravekeeper set his spade aside and turned around. He drew in a deep, slow breath, let it leak out through his nostrils. “You want another grave dug?”

“No.” She slowly shook her head. “Not tonight, anyway. Maybe another night… if that’s alright with you.”

The gravekeeper nodded. “You paid for my time. Reckon you’ll get it.”

“I’ll see myself out now.” She took two steps before stopping again. “The salt was a bit silly, wasn’t it?”

“Oh, I don’t know. If that’s what the book says, why not? Who am I to tell a necromancer their business?” He grinned at her back. “Maybe some dead folk like salt.”

“Maybe they do.”

Then she was gone.