The Three Bodies Problem

For three days the bodies had been floating over the city. Decaying. Watching them from the balcony of the highest home in her tower, Danielle felt lead weights sink in her stomach. Scaffolding was slowly rising towards them. Progress was slow. No one building the improvised wooden tower wanted to be close to the force that held the corpses in place.

            “It shouldn’t be long now,” said Prince Consort Carl. “They’re almost there. Then they can get them down and it will all be over.”

            “There’s nothing holding them there. How can we be sure anyone can get them down?” Sir Danielle bit her fingernails looking at testaments to a force beyond the control or understanding of anyone in the city. “It’s wrong. The whole thing. Every time I see them, I feel like there’s something crawling down my back. We need to do something about them. What though?”

            “We’ll figure it out.” Carl said, tearing his blue eyes away from the stomach-churning sight.

            “Shouldn’t you be in the castle, with the queen?” Danielle asked her friend.

            “She doesn’t want to see me just now,” said the prince.

            “What makes you think that?” Asked Lupita Smith, dressed in her brilliant green Royal Coven robes.

            “She subtly hinted that she didn’t want me around by throwing a dinner tray at me and yelling at me to get out. We’d been talking about the… problem.” He waved a pale hand at the immobile, levitating objects.

            Lupita kissed Danielle. “I need to go. We need to figure this out.” She waved a hand at the horrors in the sky.” She left the balcony. Her footsteps on the stairs echoed in the narrow granite streets. 

Even with a wall between them and the sight of the three bodies the two men couldn’t help but turn their heads to look again and again.

            “Did Elspeth, the Queen,” Carl corrected himself, “ask you to try anything to solve this?” The father of Princess Malin poked at broth in a bowl.

            “Luckily not. I can’t fly and I’m sure she knows I’m better at killing things. This is beyond me. Do you dream about them?” Danielle Longbow asked. Her appetite had diminished, her own broth just didn’t taste right. “When I go to sleep, I see them as if there’s nothing else but them. They’re always watching me.”

            “Yes.” Carl looked up and swallowed. “I see them as if I’m floating across the city towards them and when I get close, they grab me. I haven’t slept properly since they appeared. Have you seen the eye behind them?” Carl tugged at the sleeve of his princely garments. When people looked at him as a man Danielle remembered that he should still be a boy. If not for magic, he would have been a teen. Grey hair peppered the dome of his head.

            “What eye?” Danielle asked.

            “The eye. The eye that fills the sky behind them when you dream. An eye like the ring of gold around the moon during an eclipse. Every lash is a blade that cuts the land and sky. It watches us from another world.” He was sweating, leg tapping.

            “You really need to sleep, Carl.”

            He nodded. “Can I sleep here tonight?”

            “What about your guards outside?”

            “They could take turns sleeping on the floor?” The prince consort shrugged.

            “I’m sure they’ll love you for that.” Danielle stood, groaning from muscle ache. She clopped down the steps to the alley where two knights were standing guard. “Sir Galagad, Sir Petris, Carl insists on staying here for the night. Would you like to come up? I can take first watch if you want to try to sleep.”

            With bags under their eyes the two exchanged a glance.

            “I haven’t slept since they got there. Keep seeing them in my dreams. And the eye.” Sir Galagad’s young eyes were dull from exhaustion. His broad shoulders sagged.

            “Sleep sounds good. Thank you, Sir Longbow.” Sir Petris tried to smile but with the scar on his lip it was just another version of his usual grimace.

Two days later scaffolding creaked beneath Danielle’s feet. Looking down was terrifying, looking up was worse. The three remained. Birds had almost picked them clean. Gore speckled bones and sinews were all that remained. Perfectly still, high above the city. Watching.

            “I’m not going any higher,” said a scaffolder. He was crying, breeches soiled. He almost dropped the pack of oiled rags he was carrying. “They’re watching me. The eye is watching us all.”

            “There’s no eye,” said the knight. “Give me the rags and climb back down. Go on.”

            “I can’t move!” He wailed. His blue eyes danced the fevered dance of a stormy sea. “It has me. Make it stop.”

            “I’m going to,” she said. “Leave your bags here.”

            Three more scaffolders nodded. “Thank you, Sir Longbow.” All of them were transfixed by the bones.

            “No. Don’t make me. Please.” A brown eyed man with a scar across his ginger scalp held his hands up, pleading. His feet walked him backwards off the platform, down. Crashing off beams he hit the cobbles below.

            “No one move. That’s an order.” Danielle had seen the entire city descend into madness as the days passed. No one could sleep.

            She climbed higher with the bag of oiled rags. In another pouch she had a flint and tinder. Other men had jumped before the scaffold could truly set her level with the skeletons. She tied strips of cloth around the feet of one. Careful not to touch it, she gave a pull. It took her weight.

            There was no eye. Nothing but bodies in the air. Bodies scratched by the beaks of carrion birds. Stained with old blood. Flies still feasted on the slivers of cartilage that clung to the bones.

            With nothing but a ladder and a deadly drop beneath, she moved up a rung. She poked rags into the ribs, reaching as far as she could. Only her knees pressed towards the tilted ladder held her in place. Wind in her hair blew away her breath.

            “Why am I the only one stupid enough to do this?” She asked herself. Climbing down the ladder she untied the ropes that held it to a hastily nailed frame. Adjusting it she tied it again, checking every knot twice.

            She dressed each skeleton in oiled scraps.

            Lighting a fire while balancing on a ladder high above a city was no mean feat. Doing it to end a curse with magic none of the royal coven recognised made it harder.

            Tiny sparks were snuffed out by a cruel wind. She wanted a torch or a fire arrow but didn’t want to climb down and go all the way back up again. It had to be done, to be over. They had to burn.

            Back down the ladder, she sacrificed a thin plank from the shoddy platform to use it for a torch. She tied spare oiled rags were tight around the wood. Danielle sheltered sparks until one made itself at home in the oil. A weak flame flickered over the rags as she climbed the ladder again.

            The flame leapt from rag to rag and burned with a blue heat. Rags from body to body bloomed with blue flames that flowed from left to right.

            In the city beneath she heard screaming. Everywhere. Looking around, Danielle lost her balance and fell, grabbing at the ladder in vain. Crashing into the platform below she heard the cruel creek of the beams. Drops of flaming oil dripped.

            “No. No. NOOO.” First one, then all the men below her threw themselves from the beams, flying down towards the ground below as if it was better than staying there. One was tearing at his face as he fell.

            Screams unheard since war filled her ears. When she clapped her hands to shut out the sound her hands came away bloody. She realised she’d bitten her lip thanks to the taste of metal. Working through the pain of the fall she lowered herself off the edge of the platform. Half climbing, half falling, she made it to the ground.

            The trees were screaming. Curaduile trees that only screamed when wounded were howling in agony.

            Smashed remains of the men who had jumped were spread across the streets and a rooftop.

            Gawkers stared up. Arms pointed at the flames. Eyes bulged. Faces ran with tears. Ears and noses bled. Some were screaming, others begging for mercy.

            “Do you see?” One woman asked, unable to tear her eyes away. “The runes. Do you see the runes?”

            Danielle looked. There were no runes, just flaming skeletons. Fire gave them an impression of life. Each flicker of orange light moved the shadows of the bones. Eyes in the skulls that should have been too far away to see were clear and watching.

            Crowds pushed for a look at the balconies. Frozen in horror they screamed and moaned. None could look away.

            Finally, the heat of the fire chewed through enough of the bones that pieces started to fall onto the scaffolding below. Though the city had been built to survive the flaming barrage of siege weapons the pyramid of scaffolding was a blaze waiting to happen.

            Forcing her way passed transfixed onlookers Danielle tried to find anyone with their wits about them.

            “I’ll remember,” said a man as she passed him, “I’ll remember. I swear.” In his hand was a clump from the bald spot on his head. Ragged nails had cut his scalp as he’d ripped out his brown hair by the roots.

            “Who are you talking to?” Sir Longbow asked him.

            “The eye, do you see the letters?” He asked, eyes fixed on the skeletons.

            “No.” She ran to the castle, hoping someone there would be coherent.

            Soldiers in their armour gawped open mouthed. The pine needle green Crann tabards flapped in a wind that could not wrestle their attention from the sky.

            “Falling,” said a woman in full armour.

            Danielle turned; half of the first skeleton was gone but the scaffolding was already aflame.

            “HELLO?” She yelled loud enough to hurt her throat. “Is there anyone here who hasn’t lost their mind?”

            She stopped dead in her tracks. A young man, still a teen in his household livery, had cut his throat. The letter opener was still clutched in his hand.

            “Fuck. This has to end.” The wall of the inner baily hid the three bodies from view. She hurried through the open castle door and rushed up staircase after staircase. The royal coven met in the highest tower of the castle where it could see the entire city.

            Instead of watching from Queen Malin’s Tower, the coven was gathered along the battlements at the south of the keep. All of them had their eyes glued to the inferno still burning away the bodies.

            One was climbing a crenel of the battlements. “I’m coming,” said the blonde man, ready to leap.

            “No. No you don’t.” Grabbing him around the chest she pulled him back. He struggled. Rich green fabric of his robes flapped in her face.

            “I need to go.”

            “Then take the fucking stairs.”

            “Let me go.” He kicked her, trying to bite her arm.

            “You can’t fly. Stop it.”

            She punched him. He went down with the grace of a potato sack dropped in a puddle.

            “Lupita. Where are you?”

            “Danielle?” The voice that always soothed Sir Longbow was screechy. “I can’t look away. Help. It’s calling me.”

            “Tell it to fuck off then.” Danielle took Lupita’s hand, but her lover fought. “Damn it, Lu. Stop.”

            “I have to go to it,” said Karen Cairn, one of the witches rescued from the northern empire.

            Throwing Lupita over her shoulder, Danielle turned Karen by the shoulder and punched her, grabbing her collar before she could fall. The witch’s eyes rolled and closed.

            “Sorry.” Sir Longbow lowered Miss Cairn to the ground. “Why is there never rope when you need it?” A silhouette in the flames, one body was still burning.

            “Let me go!” Lupita kicked like an impudent toddler on the shoulders of a parent.

            Gasps escaped every mouth.

            The last of the skeletons fell, flaming, from the sky.

            The spell was broken.

            The scaffolding she had climbed was an inferno.

            “What were we?” One warlock asked. 

            “Karen?”

            “She was going to jump,” said Danielle, voice laden with guilt.

            “Thank you,” said Lupita. “You can put me down now.”

            “The eye is gone,” said a young witch Sir Longbow knew as Gerde. “The runes are gone. It’s over.” She brushed straw coloured hair away from sapphire eyes. Scratches down her face matched the skin beneath her nails.

            “The scaffolding is on fire. This isn’t over until we’ve put that out. I need the queen, where is she?” She set Lupita back on her feet.

            “She’ll be in the tower.” Lupita set off at a run. Danielle struggled to keep up after running through Leonor and up all the stairs on the way there.

Queen Elspeth had the fires put out before they could spread from the wooden tower to the buildings beneath. After the emergency, the investigation began. Who had the three bodies been? What force held them in the air over Leonor? What were the runes everyone except Danielle had seen? Whose eye had watched as they went without sleep for days?