‘No one deserves this, Spil,’ Siwan murmured gently.
One of the other figures—as broad as a barn and nearly as ugly—walked past his corpse and surveyed the path he had crawled in agonising, lurching spasms.
‘Had the same thought I did, it seems,’ the big figure said.Harwick: his name bubbled up from the murky pool of memory.A pleasant afternoon spent with a deck of cards and a bottle of fine gin, courtesy of a well-entertained innkeeper.‘Met someone up there who didn’t want to be met, maybe.’
And then a woman who resolved with almost perfect clarity.He did not know her name, but he knew her face, knew those generous, terrible hands that had filled his with gold and set him on the path towards his death.If not for her, he would not have felt the swell of hope that left him vulnerable.Who can say—his killer might have taken his hospitality and parted ways with him come morning if not for the tempting gleam of gold.
This one… Lashing out at her might not heal him, but it would let him feel something other than the constant, radiating pain.
The pain burned brighter, filled him, narrowed his focus until all became echoes but his corpse and the woman standing over it, wearing guilt as a mask over her complicity.It filled his being, pulled him taut.A bowstring nocked and ready.
‘We have time to bury him,’ the woman said.She began to gather stones, placing them around his body in a rough circle.‘This kingdom is haunted enough.’
The others stood and watched.
‘Our pursuer could be close behind,’ another voice said—Llewyn.Sound carried memory better than sight.
‘He died by violence, and in agony,’ the woman said, placing another stone.‘If you abandon him like this, he will become a wraith.’
‘And piling some stones is enough to prevent that?’asked Siwan.
‘Doesn’t it lessen your own hurts when another person recognises them?’the woman answered.‘It comforts the dead to know they are not forgotten, that the living feel an echo of their pain.He was your friend.Would you deny him a decent burial just because he stole a few coins and fled in a panic?’
A sentiment which only stoked Jareth’s rage.How could they, the living, with their dreams not forever shattered, ‘feel an echo’ of a fraction of his pain?It was insulting.Like the scattered, obligatory applause of a tavern audience more interested in their drinks and conversation.
‘She’s right,’ another of the silhouettes said—thin and dark, and hanging on Harwick’s arm, with an expression mournful enough to be almost believable.‘However much a bastard he was in the end, he was one of us.We owe him a proper send-off.’
Harwick grunted, and the two went off with Siwan to gather more stones.Llewyn muttered a curse and slumped to the ground, wincing and holding his side, his own hurts overruling what sympathy he might have felt for the dead.Llewyn could always be counted on not to flatter.
The boy Damon muttered something, cast about the field, selecting rocks, scratching at them with the edge of his belt knife, discarding them, until he found one that satisfied him.He knelt over the stone and went on scratching with his knife.Meanwhile, the woman who had doomed him with her gift of gold began drawing in the dirt while Harwick, Spil and Siwan continued gathering stones.
It was better than being left open to the elements and beasts.Better than the indignity of bloating under the sun and withering to rotten leather and bleached bone.They offered him a gesture towards dignity.
But only a gesture!A barrow of hastily piled stones would do little against a determined scavenger, nor against the seep of rain and grasping fingers of rot.No better than half-hearted congratulations after a poor performance.No more dignified than acting upon an improvised stage of crates and tabletops.An ignoble end to an ignoble life, and a life that should have been so much more!
The pain burned brighter.Wrath consumed him, drove him to reach down.A grasping hand to seize the throat of this woman who he knew, with that small part of his mind still capable of anything but anger, was not truly responsible for his death.But who lay within reach.Whose suffering might soothe him for a moment.
Harwick placed a stone on Jareth’s body, beginning to bury him.The woman shook her head and removed the stone.‘Only a circle,’ she said.‘I will do the rest.’
Jareth reached down, could feel his wrath working upon the world, gathering strength, ready to rip and tear.
‘You would give him a king’s burial?’Spil said with a note of confusion inflected with awe, surveying the spiral she had carved in the dirt.
Jareth stayed his hand.
‘Better than piled stones, no?’the woman said.‘I saw how the druids did it.’
There was a moment of quiet but for Damon’s scraping at the flat stone he had chosen.
‘Isn’t it blasphemy?’Spil said at last.
‘He played a king upon the stage, where he was most alive and most himself,’ Damon said, not looking up from his work.‘Let him be buried as one.’
Words that cracked Jareth’s heart, letting him return, for a moment, to himself.Harwick, Spil and Siwan stood aside, watching as the woman finished her drawing.
The woman hesitated a moment, the rock she had been scrawling with poised to make a final line.She put her finger to something bundled against her chest and brought it away dribbling blood, then knelt beside Jareth’s body.
‘What are you doing?’Siwan demanded.
