Friday Fiction: Aftermath

 

AFTERMATH

 

     It was a late – a very late – autumn day.  The great chamber at the heart of the New Royal School lay closed and stuffy; no-one had been in or out for two weeks. The only moving things there had been the climbing and declining rays of sunlight across the walls and the shuffle of spiders now and then in the high corners of the room.

An abrupt clanking of the doorhandle broke the silence, setting echoes that seemed to startle and stir the innumerable shelves of books and papers and set them rustling with the inrush of air as the door creaked open. A Morgish muzzle poked cautiously into the room, followed by a black beard bristling nervously beneath. There was a loud, inhaling sniff.

     “H … Hello?” A voice quavered hesitantly into the echoing chamber.

It was followed the next instant by a squawk as its gangly owner was pushed stumbling into the room. Almost immediately behind him came a stern, matronly Morgess, her plain shift the mellow yellow color of the staff proctors. She crossed her arms impatiently as the Morg caught his balance, then adjusted his green tunic, brow wrinkling.

“Was that absolutely necessary, Ena?” he grumbled.

“What, you were waiting for an answer, Master Grax?” she said flatly. “We’ve got too much work to do clearing this place out without wasting time.”

“Well, you never know,” the Morg said vaguely. He cut his cut his eyes around the room. “After all, history is full of stories … lingering presences, you know … it doesn’t hurt to be respectful ...”

He shivered.

“Don’t you feel something?”

The stolid Morgess shrugged.

“He wasn’t the head of my department. Just the Grand Master of the School.”

Grax’s jaw flopped open.

“But he was Korm!” he protested. “The greatest scholar of his generation, if not in all the history of Forlan! Student of Belmok! He discovered the treasure of the Lost City of the Moon! Almost the last living of the Goldfire Questers!”

Ena shrugged again and raised an eyebrow.

“As I recall, he had them looking in the wrong place to begin with, which almost led to their deaths,” she said, her voice dry.

“Well, nobody’s perfect.” Grax looked around and tangled his claws through his stringy beard. “Honestly, though, can’t you feel something … personal in the air?”

“Of course,” Ena said briskly. She stepped over to the grand desk that was the centerpiece of the office. Grax followed in her wake. “My old Madra explained it to me before I even became a proctor and started the job. My uncle had passed away and I thought his room was haunted. She told me it was like this.”

She pulled out the chair and sat down by the desk and began examining the objects that cluttered the top, straightening papers and books.

“The most essential part of a person is the spirit or mind, and very close to it is the body, which picks up and discards material as it goes along.”

“Well, that seems pretty obvious.”

“Right. If we didn’t have bodies, there’s no way we’d know anybody else has a mind. When the spirit that gave the body form is gone, the body collapses into mere material … but that material is how we knew the spirit was there.”

Grax snorted. “What does that have to do with … well, hauntings?”

“There’s a third circle of existence that most people don’t think about, and that’s the influence a person had on things while they were alive.”

Ena finished straightening the desktop and stood up, eying the room critically as she moved toward the bed.

“You mean like their legacy, their influence on history?” Grax moved over and sat down himself. Now that Ena had broken the ice, as it were, he found himself filled with awe to be sitting at the great Morg’s desk. He ran a reverent claw slowly along the edge.

“It’s even more personal than that.” The old Morgess went over to the bulky wardrobe next to the bed, swung open the door, and looked over the contents. Her nose wrinkled at the stale smell.

“The things a person collects … the things that only he uses … they’re like the armor a twister slug leaves behind when it changes. The bug is gone elsewhere, but there’s a hollow shell where he used to be, in the shape of what he was.” She shut the wardrobe. “Eventually it collapses or something else takes up residence.”

Grax’s eyes widened.

“I don’t think it’s quite respectful to speak of Master Korm as a slug. He was a great person.” His claws were wandering over the desk drawers with an eagerness of their own, feeling the knobs in anticipation. “Who knows what great legacy he’s left behind for other scholars to find? Who knows …?”

Almost unconsciously he pulled a drawer open. Surprised at his action, he looked down, stopping in mid-sentence. He went still.

After a moment he cleared his throat.

“Why do you suppose,” he asked shakily. “That anyone would save a drawerful of nail-clippings?”

“What?” Ena barked, hastening to his side. She stared down into the drawer.

“Ugh. Well, that’s going into the fire, for starters.”  

Grax shook his head.

“That’s just … odd.”

“Well, they do say it never pays to look too deeply into the great ones’ lives. You’ll find they all raise their flap to shit.”

“I suppose so.” He wrinkled his muzzle. “I suppose we’d better buckle down to work. The next High Master will be wanting to move in soon.”

“That’s so.” Ena looked around with an assessing eye. “Looks like more work for you than me. How many boxes do you think you’ll need?”

The other Morg around helplessly at the shelves bulging with books and papers.

“About twenty?” he ventured.

“Let’s make it thirty. It’s always better to have too many than not enough.” She walked over to the bed – a rather simple and narrow piece of furniture, Grax thought, for the legendary hero – and began stripping the bedclothes, folding them neatly at the foot. “By the way, any idea who the new High Master will be?”

“I only know it won’t be me.” He sighed. “There are a few candidates of course, but none stand out. How can you replace someone like Korm?”

“And yet he will be. No-one’s irreplaceable. Like my madra said when the old King died, you can stick your hand in a bucket of water and take it out again, and the hole that’s left is equal to the absence in society what’s felt when even a great one passes.”

“That seems rather cynical,” the other sniffed. He pulled a scroll out of his pocket and began perusing the list written there.

“But practical. Life, as they say, goes on.” She turned from her work. “What’s that, then?”

“A list of bequests and whatnot,” Grax said distractedly, eyes running over the scroll. “Some special gifts of books to various persons and places.”

His lips moved mumbling quietly, then he looked up in dismay at the overcrowded shelves around them.

“How the hell am I supposed to pick them out here? It’s like looking for particular stalks in a field of wheat!”

“Oh, be quiet!” Ena flipped the last folds of the sheets and turned her attention to the wardrobe. “Big as the chore is, bit by bit it gets done, don’t it? That’s what we say downstairs.” She opened the door. “Huh. Not a lot of clothes for a Master. And pretty shabby, too.”

“Vanity was not one of his weaknesses.” Grax sniffed. “Not like some Masters I know.” He walked over to a nearby shelf, turned a corner to the back, and began scanning the books there.

Ena grinned.

“I bet I could name a few you’re thinking of.” She wrinkled her nose. “I think these can all go on the scrap pile. They buried him in his best, I suppose.”

“Yes, of course,” Grax said absently, as his eyes flickered over the titles. He muttered, reading them to himself as he bent close to see. Suddenly he stopped and gasped in astonishment. “What the --,” he began slowly, brow furrowed, anger in his voice.

“What? What?” The old Morgess came hurrying over gleefully to join him. She thought she heard scandal in his voice and was eager for a little spice on this dull job.

She turned the corner and found Grax leafing through a volume, an appalled expression on his muzzle.

“What is it?” she asked excitedly. “Our revered Grand Master been secretly reading some fiery romances?”

“No, look at this! Just look!” He pointed one shaking claw at a blue seal on the book’s spine. “This is from the Great Library! No-one is supposed to remove this! No-one!”

Ena shrugged.

“Surely the Grand Master could …”

“No-one!”

Ena shrugged again.

“Well, one book …”

“No, look!” Grax waved his arms angrily. “Look! Shelves upon shelves of them. There must be almost two hundred books here!”

Ena whistled long and low out of the sides of her muzzle, eyes wide.

“Oh, he has been a naughty boy!” she chortled. “Well, all sins must out, they say.”

Grax covered his eyes and rocked his head, moaning softly, before straightening up and tugging his beard in sudden resolution.

“Well, this one mustn’t. It would be bad for morale, and even worse for discipline. Just think what would happen if it got around that Korm … Korm, of all people, was a … a … a book thief!” He spat the words out. “Next thing you know our shelves would be bare, with the students using his example as an excuse.” He wrinkled his brow. “But how to get them back in the library without anyone knowing?”

“Simple enough,” Ena said breezily. “I’ll just bring an empty cleaning cart over tonight, load them up with some rags on top, and wheel it over to the archives. Sprinkle ‘em around on the tables here and there and let the librarians sort ‘em out. Believe me, nobody notices cleaners going around.”

“You’d do that for me?” The other Morg relaxed visibly. “That would be very helpful.”

“Never you mind.” The old lady patted him on the shoulder. “My job here is pretty light. Never knowed a Master of any grade to be so monk-like in his living. His personables are hardly worth giving to the School’s thrift store. But all this …” She indicated the stuffed shelves around them. “I don’t envy you and your assistants going through all this.”

Grax barked shortly.

“Oh, it’s like sorting out a dragon’s hoard for us. A pleasant task, once the guardian’s out of the way.”

Ena looked dubious.

“Well, if you say so.” She looked around. “Well, I guess the first once-over’s done. I’ll go get some carts for the lugging and by tomorrow ‘twill all be clear for you scholar-squirrels to gather your nuts. Best meet me back here in an hour so you can direct me about them books.”

“Yes, yes, I have a few things to attend to right quick, then I’ll be back.” They moved to the door, where Grax paused and looked around with a little shiver. “I don’t think I’d fancy waiting here all alone until then.”

“Don’t let it bother you none,” Ena grinned. “In my experience, dead folks is the least dangerous kind.”

The door shut firmly, and the key clicked in the lock. The echoing footsteps died away and all was silent for a while. After a while, a voice for those who could hear spoke up apologetically.

“Oh, dear. I really did mean to return those books … sometime, you know. There just never seemed to be a good time.”

“In the last one hundred years, you mean?” The other voice was gruff, but noncommittal.

“Well …”

The other voice changed its tone.

“Have you seen enough? Are you ready to go now?”

“I was just wondering how …”

“No, it is enough.” The other voice was firm but sounded a little exasperated. “It’s always the same with you scholar types, curious about what happens next. Well, what happens next is there’s work to be done elsewhere.”

The first voice began to fade away, interest in its tone.

“I thought it was going to be some kind of rest …”

The second voice sounded amused as it too faded.

“Where we’re going, work and rest don’t have separate meanings. Perhaps the closest word here in this world is play.”

“Well, that does sound interesting …”

And then they were gone, and there was only silence in the hollow dusty chamber. 

Finished First Draft 9:49 PM

7/10/2021

Notes:

Well. Though there are more stories and story fragments filed away already, I hope by next Friday to have some absolutely new content prepared, perhaps finally the continuation of Thrand. This story puts a kind of a button on the 'Korm' strand of Tales of the Morgs, although I wouldn't rule out another one popping up from the 'between times.' Its origin, of course, stems from my wondering about the fate of my own 'archives' once I am gone. Ena's observations, especially about the 'shell' idea about a kind of afterlife, are my own, but the water and bucket observation is from an old poem.

The Indispensable Man Saxon White Kessinger (1959) Sometime when you’re feeling important; Sometime when your ego’s in bloom Sometime when you take it for granted You’re the best qualified in the room, Sometime when you feel that your going Would leave an unfillable hole, Just follow these simple instructions And see how they humble your soul; Take a bucket and fill it with water, Put your hand in it up to the wrist, Pull it out and the hole that’s remaining Is a measure of how you’ll be missed. You can splash all you wish when you enter, You may stir up the water galore, But stop and you’ll find that in no time It looks quite the same as before. The moral of this quaint example Is do just the best that you can, Be proud of yourself but remember, There’s no indispensable man.