To a passerby, the village of Qúa was no different than any of the other hundred such villaiges dotted across the countryside of Yosae. Simple wooden homes were built atop stacked stone foundations, which rested among the warm orange blossoms of the Dkaro trees. The blooms had been delayed by the late spring and the resulting slowed onset of summer, but to any familiar with the country, they would have been a welcome sight, a promise of rich fruit coming in the autumn.

  Around the town, tiers of rice paddies led up to the foot of the mountain, where a forest of oaks, ashes, and countless other species of tree provided for all the needs of the small village, and more. Below, in the fields, the people of the village happily tended to the Gekuistli that protected their fields from pests, taking the occasional gekuistli and cooking the small blue crabs to add flavor to a simple meal of rice or noodles in a simple broth, and just like Amy other village, the elderly would take the iridescent blue shells and they would shape them into jewelry, or into inlays.

  Other things were normal about the town as well. The brewery, where Gen-Hua had taken over from his father making wine from the rice that grew in the fields, as well as whatever fruits he could secure for more specific flavors. The building had stood for well fee a century, had been passed from father to son since the village had been built, and in that was entirely ordinary. A small inn stood next to it, where the Loa family made ink from soot, the way they had for generations, paint from ground stones and oils, and offered a meal to the rare traveler crossing the Benú mountains from the port city of Goka dawnwards towards Langshen.

  It would not take long, however, for someone with a discerning eye to notice the abnormalities.

  A young girl with wavy black hair skipped up the dirt street that passed through the middle of the town, a small bag slung over her shoulder, her red skirt heavily embroidered with swirling patterns mimicking the orange Dkaro blossoms of Qúa in blatant defiemace of the austerity favored by the Yosae. Her hair hung loose, as was customary for young girls, and caught the sun in wavy ripples very much not like other girls as she stopped in front of a vegetable stand set up in front of the inn.

  ”Nana Loa!” The girl called out, “I need two ears of maítz, please!”

  an older woman turned from the sewing she had been doing, beaming at the girl before her.

  “My dear Emilia-Yun! I swear as the days go by, you look more and more like your grandmother, may she rest in the halls of the remembered.”

  “Thanks Nana.” The girl smiled for a moment, as Nana Loa shuffled over to reach one of the shelves of her stand, and selected two ears of a strange aveshtani vegetable no other village in Yosae seemed to grow, despite its savor.

  ”Tell me, what have you been up to today, miss Yun?”

  Emilia hesitated after taking the two bundles of green leaves, filled with golden kernels of deliciousness.

  “I was helping catch Gekuistli for the festival tomorrow. Then I helped Chu-Hua learn weaving from her mother. She has a hard time focusing.”

  “That sounds like a productive day.”

  Emilia nodded, glancing at a plate of steamed buns someone had set out for a traveler in dark robes within the inn.

  “I do wish the other girls would talk less though.” She said quietly. “Their words have… changed, since Ab’ma passed from the living world.”

  “Changed how, child?”

  Emilia hesitated, as she put the ears of maítz in her bag.

  “It’s my hair, Nana. They throw things in it, tease me for it not being as straight or smooth as theirs.”

  Nana nodded sadly.

  ”They are likely jealous child. They know the Yun family has the last claim to your great-great-grandfather’s charge, and his connections to our young goddess. They are also nervous, our town has not had one who could speak to the Lady since your Ab’ma passed on.”

  Emilia glanced at the painting inside the carved stone house built next to the inn, set aside as a place for offerings to be taken to the souls of the remembered. Within the carved stone house a drawing on a slat of Takwal- extremely strong bamboo used typically for tools, or spears, using only black and red inks. Emilia knew the drawing by heart, her father had painted them using inks they had bought from the Loa family. There were six in town, about the size of a firearm, depicting a woman in a red dress, with flowing hair that nearly touched the floor.

  ”Nana, you know he had three children- I have cousins in town.”

  ”True.” Nana Loa sat down on her stool next to the girl. “But- little miss Yun- none of them ever made a point to speak directly with the Lady of the Dead, now did they?”

  Emilia bowed her head, kicking a loose stone.

  “Hui-ying said it’s only third daughters, or daughters who can’t find a husband, who should get involved in the affairs of gods. They said I won’t ever get married now that I’ve heard songs in the trees.”

  Nana Loa scoffed. “Small minds from a small place, Emilia-Yun. There is no ‘Qúa’ family, now is there? We haven’t cared about such traditions since your great-grandfather’s time.” Nana Loa shuddered. “Spirits below heaven… I still remember the day that Rabbit-Dragon tore through town. How a rabbit could ever grow enough to attain that level of divinity…” she shook her head, setting a wrinkled hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Community, ni?a, helping each other, filling a role as needed. That is what matters. Your Great-Grandfather fought drakes, your Grandmother served as our guide in making deals with the little gods. Your mother has filled in well, in singing her songs, tending to her shrine, and I am sure the Lady of the Dead has taken note.”

  Nana Loa pointed to a small shrine, constructed outside the inn for good luck, and for travelers to leave offering for the town’s gods. “La-Catrina is a kind goddess. Remember your ancestors, so that they may enjoy her realm, and I am sure she will help you find your place here in the realm of the living.”

  Emilia nodded appreciatively, clasped her hands, and gave the older woman a small bow in thanks, before racing off through Qúa. She had one more stop to make, before coming home. Chu-Hua and Hui-Ying had music lessons with her mother. Emilia didn’t feel like seeing the two of them again yet.

  She followed a path lined in black stones that led from the inn up the mountain, and into the trees and carefully cultivated takwal groves. She smiled, as she reached a hand out to feel the soft Dkaro blossoms, enjoying the amber glow of the setting sun as its warmth bathed their little village.

  She saw the light of a lantern being lit, and she picked up her pace, rounding a corner in the path to find a familiar face, an elder,y farmer who always found a way to slip Emilia the sweetest treats at festivals.

  “M?ng-Lo!” She called out with a laugh, wrapping the old farmer in a hug as he struggled to keep the lantern aloft. “What are you doing near the shrine?”

  He chuckled, lifting a small woven basket. She knew it would be filled with small offerings. Bits of food, bottles of rice-wine, other things.

  ”I’m on my way to pay my wife a visit. Care to join me?”

  Emilia nodded. “I was on my way to the shrine anyway.”

  he linked arms with the young girl, and they made their way slowly up the last stretch of the path, where the stones switched to a white the menfolk of the town had brought down from the mountain. A circular arch of stacked stones stretched over the path right at the transition point, and wooden posts carved with depictions of skeletal figures dancing and drinking lined the walkway to a relatively small stone building, with a black slate roof. Stones stood in neat rows along either side of the path, and Emilia smiled as she saw the pale flicker of spirit lights drifting above some of them.

  M?ng-Lo set the basket down in front of one of the newer obelisks, carved with the decorative script of Yosae with his wife’s name.

  Emilia helped him pull the items from his basket. A small ceramic cup, a bottle of his wife’s favorite lavender scented rice-wine, a wedge of goat-cheese, and some steamed bread that made Emilia’s mouth water. It took time, helping the old man to light the tallow candle he had brought, and to set it in the sconce carved into the obelisk for that exact purpose. Emilia smiled. The next night, the entire town would gather here, and nearly every single one of these plinths would have a lit candle warming it, with fresh offerings to take to the halls of the remembered.

  M?ng-Lo squeezed her hand once in thanks, the knelt silently before the grave, setting his lantern into a hole in the dirt.

  “Go on inside, girl, I will handle the rest.”

  Emilia nodded, glancing once at the last ray of sunlight as the day dropped below the horizon, and stepped through the doorway to the shrine, shitting the Ironwood door behind her respectfully, as she removed her beaded black slippers.

  She crossed the small space, passing windows inset with actual panes of colored glass, as dried petals crunched underfoot. She knelt before the row of candles in the small shrine, leaned over to the ever light candle, one a sorcerer had enchanted to never run out, and lit a small reed she carried with her. She reached out, and used the reed to light the first row of candles that stood on the altar of the shrine. The soft amber light barely illuminated the small space within the stone building, but she found the glow comforting and warm. It always was, even when she lit only one of the several candles that lined this room, and even somehow in the dead of winter, but every once in a while, she would bring enough to do this- to replace and light one entire row, right beneath the fresco that covered this entire wall. She’d make enough light to see the entire painting.

  It was one that she had seen countless times- usually with her mother next to her, helping her through the awkward, rhythmic litanies that were expected of them, but she was old enough now, and had been here frequently enough, that she didn’t need her mother’s help to recite the songs of her great-great grandfather. But still, she took a moment to admire the painting. It was of a woman- one with long, dark hair like any woman in Yosae, though it was wavy and thick - like the hair in Emilia’s family. Her face was decorated with paint, to resemble a skull- but not in a scary way- in a way that used petals, gems, and bits of brilliant color to create a kind face that looked out from among the white and black paints. A long red dress trailed down to the floor in the painting, and she bore a massive hat- not like the cone-shaped hats that they all wore in the rice paddies, a strange thing with a flat brim and a small domed section in the middle. The fresco had images of floating candles around the woman, and little flames floating above the wide brimmed hat. E,ilia always thought they represented the souls she protected. No one knew for sure though. Her grandfather had never told anyone what his parents had thought exactly when they first made the fresco, in a much cruder building.

  Supposedly, that woman protected their little village. No one could agree in what she was exactly- many decided that she was a lesser diety, perhaps from her great-great-grandfather’s homeland, beyond Dreshar, from across the Leviathan Sea. Others thought she was a powerful guardian spirit, or perhaps a particularly dedicated ancestor, who refused to abandon her family. Regardless, everyone left their offerings at the shrine when they could, and had done so for close to a century and a half. The shrine was central to the function of the town, even if the stone structure sat at the very edge of the community, nestled up against the foot of the mountain where the trees met the small wall that lined Qúa.

  She knelt before the candles, knees together, feet tucked underneath her bottom, and touched her head to the flagstones of the shrine before the simple altar, before rising, pressing her palms together before her pale forehead in respect. She dropped her hands to her lap, staring at the fresco for a while.

  “I - I know that usually, I play for you, here, as Mother told me, but, Mother needs the Pipa today- she said she would have guests over."

  Emilia shifted, uncomfortably. Chu-hua and Hui-ying had started taking lessons from her mother, but the young girl had heard the others making fun of the lessons- making fun of this shrine that their ancestors had built and worshipped at, making fun of the fact that Emilia always had candles in her work-bag, had learned to write both scripts - her great-great-grandfather’s writing - the strange language her name came from - and the writing of Yosae, her country. Emilia loved lessons with her ,other the most. No one could deny that Jia-Yun was the best musician in the village- and better than many from Goka, or Langshen. At least, that’s what some of the travelers, adventurers, or merchants said whenever they heard her sing, heard her play the Pipa or any of the other dozen instruments that her mother could weild in song as if they were part of her.

  Emilia-Yun was only ten. She was still young, and could only play the Pipa. She didn't dare take any of mother’s more expensive instruments. Those had come from across the seas, bought at great cost from the markets of Langshen.

  “I - I hope you don’t mind. I - I don’t need to tell you why, I guess. Mother says that you watch everything that happens here, in Qúa.” She paused, glancing back up at the fresco, at the woman’s face, so carefully illustrated.

  “I hope a song is good enough, for today.”

  She stood, slowly, as her mother had taught her, and opened her mouth, beginning the first few notes of the song. It was strange- she didn’t understand the words, although her mother had told her again and again what they meant- but the language was...unusual. More like something from the merchant empire of Aveshtan. The words and notes still echoed in the small stone room, only about ten feet wide in any direction, reverberating in a way that made them seem almost angelic. Emilia couldn’t help but smile, as her eyes drifted closed, as she let herself get lost in the music.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  The song was not long- but she knew that it was a story- about a man, who loved a woman. A man who loved her too much to leave until she loved him in return. It was his story - her great-great-grandfather’s. And then, it was over, the last note echoing in the small shrine, the candles burned down a little bit lower, but the flames seemingly brighter than ever, as Emilia looked up at the kind face of La-Catrina.

  “I- father is sick. I don’t know, if you do that- Mother says you keep the dead safe, in your halls- but… please, I just want you to help him.”

  She stepped up to the altar, to blow out the candles, when a wind seemed to whip around her, the decorative cherry blossoms that the people of the village laid on the floor during springtime scattering, whipping about her hair, dancing before her for a moment. She yelped, and froze when she heard it - a whisper, quiet, almost imperceptible, but undeniable just for an instant.

  Do not blow them out

  The light is all that keeps you safe, in my hall.

  Then she heard it- the screams.

  Her head whipped around, as she rushed up to the glass panes of the small windows that lined the Shrine and stared in horror. Her village was burning. She saw people farther downhill running back and forth, using shovels, pitchforks, anything they could get their hands on, fighting...something. People?

  A rotting hand slapped against the window, and Emilia screamed, falling back and knocking over a candelabra, the stand toppling and sending unlit candles rolling across the flagstones.

  A shambling...thing, lifted it’s head to look through the window, face fetid and decomposing, It rotted visage barely came into view through the window, before it fell back shrieking, as if something had burned it, or blinded it.

  She could hear more. Shuffling, moaning, more screams and sounds of fighting. She heard a yell- a voice that sounded like M?ng’Lo. He was calling for help.

  There was a crunch, and then he wasn't.

  She fell down onto the floor of the shrine in a panic, heart pounding, tears pouring down her face as the sounds intensified. More fighting, more screams. More dying. She clamped her hands over her ears, humming the songs once again, eyes squeezed shut against the horrors outside.

  She heard something- like a spark. She opened her eyes to watch one candle flicker to life, next to the row that she had lit. Then another, then another. One by one all the candles still upright in the room blazed to life, burning with a brilliance that Emilia had never seen before, practically blinding the girl herself as the light raged inside the small room. Emilia stared in shock, mouth agape in amazement as the light gathered, building like a storm on the horizon within the small space, before it seemed to flare- brilliant arcs of light snapping from the windows, striking things outside, sparking out into the air like a sunburst. Emilia was knocked back against the altar, knocking over a few of the candles, as the doors to the shrine suddenly ripped themselves open- and for the briefest of moments, Emilia could have sworn that she saw a shape in the doorway- the briefest glimpse of a long, floor-length dress, and a femenine form, before the light seemed to rush out into Qúa, like a whirlwind.

  Emilia ran to the window, staring in shock as the brilliant light seemed to sweep over the town - coursing through the cemetery, through the streets. Figures seemed to simply...drop, to stop moving and collapse to the ground in a heap of fetid bones.

  She ran out then, perhaps agaisnt her better judgement, into the rain that began pouring down in th night, into the muck, mud, and horror. She stared in shock- Farmer M?ng-Lo lay on the ground just inside the gates to the cemetery, body collapsed against the moon gate, one hand outstretched towards the stone shrine, his face a mask of pain and agony. Emilia gagged. His abdomen had been torn open, and his entrails littered the sand of the walkway. A corpse- long dead, from the look of things, lay on the ground next to him, mouth bloodied and agape, lifeless and inert. Emilia pulled her scarf up to cover her mouth as she ran through the streets.

  Dead and dying littered the space, all sign of the light that had swept the town for that briefest of instances gone, replaced by moans, of pain and mourning both. She saw Nana Loa clutching the dead body of her husband, his face staring blankly to the sky, throat marred by a mass of red, and saw many others weeping, clutching pitchforks or old family weapons.The worst part now were the fires. Smoldering torches now smoked in the muck and the mud, barely embers, clearly having been carried by the shambling corpses that had somehow come into the town. Many buildings burned- the winery, as well as the tavern owned by Chu-Hua’s father. Chu-Hua was crying in her mother’s arms, the girl covered in mud and ash, clutching a burned arm. Emilia darted through the middle of the burning street, ignoring the line of people passing buckets from the small river that ran by the village even as rain beat down on the roaring flames, darting past weeping people, slaughtered corpses, almost running into the blacksmith’s apprentice. He glanced down at her for a moment, before turning his attention to the inn, as he directed the effort to douse the fire. Emilia tpnoticed hos family sword was fouled with viscera, then ran, passing through the outer gate of the village, out past the fields that they had planted with the neat rows and rapidly growing stalks of Maítz, all the way to the small stone wall that separated the village from the rice paddies.

  She saw the glow of orange, and nearly screamed in panic as she raced up the muddied lane to the wall of dark stone, her pale hands slapping against the rocks as she leaned over, finally getting a clear view of her family’s cottage.

  Flames reached for the sky- the straw roof long gone, the rafters all but falling in on themselves. She screamed, and raced forwards, running around the small home in a panic, trying desperately to find some gap in the stone. The windows were shattered, but Emilia knew in a moment that they were too small for anyone to escape through.

  She screamed for ther mother, calling her name again and again, calling for her father, for Doon-Yun, for anyone else to come and help, but was met with the roaring snaps of burning wood and the raging fire before her. She watched as it tried to light one of the trees, but failed to catch as the rain seemed to intensify for the briefest of moments.

  She fell to her knees, in the mud, and wept, screaming into the burning light in front of her for hours, watching until the flames finally died away, as the rafters finally collapsed into the home.

  She stood in a daze, in the waning light of the moon, as the clouds above thinned. Voices still called from the village itself, and she could hear the wailing of mourning families. None of it mattered though, as she pushed aside what was left of the ironwood door, the charred ruin falling off of its hinges, throwing up ash in the room beyond.

  She stared at the embers of her life.

  That pile of cinders was where the dining table had once stood- there the plants that she had so carefully coaxed to grow. Ashes. There was what remained of her mother’s sitting chair- recognisable only for a tiny piece of the back that bore her father’s delicate woodcarvings. She lifted the chunk numbly, feeling the ash sear her skin as she shuffled into the second room of three- her mother’s sitting room.

  She sank to her knees again, met with three skulls, charred and burned.

  She stared, not saying a word, as the rain settled down onto her shoulders, soaking her even as it hissed off of the smoldering remains of her home.

  She fell to her knees, extending her fingers weakly towards the smallest skull visible in the ashes, huddled between the remains of her parents. Her hands shook, her vision blurred, as ash mixed with the rain around her.

  She didn’t notice the footsteps until they were shuffling through the ash immediately behind her. Emilia wheeled around in a panic, crawling back from the figure to huddle against a remaining wall of stone.

  A woman stood there at what was left of the doorway, staring sadly at the three bodies in the ash. She wore black, a floor-length dress disturbing the ashes ever so slightly, a large black hat obscuring her face.

  She crouched, fingers hovering a few inches from the bones with a sadness that seemed deeper than the lake up in the mountains beyond the Wall of Heaven, before she turned to Emilia.

  The girl’s breath caught in her chest as those dark eyes met hers.

  Wavy hair spilled around the woman’s face, falling nearly to her waist, but what caused Emilia’s heart to skip was the white paint that covered the smooth skin, imitating the look of a skull.

  “Emilia-Yun. I am so sorry that I could not come sooner.”

  Emilia couldn’t speak, as those melodious words seemed to chime into the ruins of her home.

  The woman did not stand, did not move, but opened her mouth again.

  “I could not act- not until M?ng-Lo called for me on that hallowed ground- that ground that your ancestor dedicated to me.”

  She looked sadly at the figures on the ground. “Even here, I am still bound by the ancient rules of my kind, I can only act when...when the situation allows.”

  Emilia watched as the woman sifted through the ashes, pulling out a charred hunk of rounded wood, a few tattered remnants of the wire strings still noticeable.

  “Beauty, however fleeting, life, however potent, still must pass one day.”

  Emilia stood then, taking a step towards the woman.

  “Are- are you-”

  The woman raised a finger to her lips.

  “Shhh- Now now, Emilia, you know that I cannot tell you that- or what is the point of faith?”

  She looked down at the destroyed remnants of the Pipa in her hands, before smiling softly, a ring of painted flower petals lining the dark eyes seeming to glow for the briefest of moments, before she breathed out a single clear, sharp note into the damp air.

  Emilia watched on in awe, eyes widening as cinders and ashes lifted from the ground, gathering and binding together, attaching to the charred remnants of the instrument. Before her eyes, it seemed to rebuild itself, speck of dust by speck of dust, until it shone a polished black, covered in decorative patterns, like ebony reflecting the light of the moon, the last glows of the embers.

  The petals dimmed, and the woman extended the instrument to Emilia.

  “This, however, I can give you. But, as with everything, there is a cost.”

  Emilia hesitated. “A- a cost?”

  The woman nodded, turning back to the orange glow of the burning village of Qúa.

  “You will understand the cost, Emilia, in time. Menawhile, While you live, you will spread word of my protection - of the chance for repentance and change that I offer. Can you do that, Emilia, of the Yun family?”

  Emilia’s hands trembled as she stared at the instrument. It was all that she had left, the last scattered shred of her family. Could she really serve this woman? Who she thought this woman to be?

  She thought back to the experience in the shrine- the lights that repulsed the shambling, horrific things. The light that killed all of the undead creatures throughout the village.

  Protection. Her mother had told her of this.

  Emilia extended a pale, trembling hand, and gripped the neck of the pipa, running her fingers over the brassy strings, running a trembling finger over the familiar form- even if the color had changed, even if it wasn’t painted with beautiful images of trees in summer, and ivory lining, it was familiar to her.

  “I - I don’t know much, but, I- I will try, Miss Catrina.”

  The woman smiled, a mischievous grin breaking through the sadness and sorrow that covered her face.

  “Good. Play. Sing. Comfort the families of this village and bring them solace. My words will come to you from the shadows, on the whispers of the wind, and you will recognise it.”

  The woman drove a hand deep into the ashes in the corner and pulled from it a pristine copy of her family’s history - everything that they had ever done, all the accomplishments, all the way back to the great-great-grandfather. There were even the drawings, there- the ones that her mother had dutifully placed on a simple altar once a year, drawing that would have been proudly displayed in their home the very next day, when they remembered the dead.

  “Can- can you bring them back?” Emilia didn’t dare look at the bodies on the ground.

  “Oh, my sweet child…” the woman whispered, even as the ashes seemed to swirl around her, obscuring her form “some things a god cannot do, not without a mortal’s hand to will it…”

  The ashes fell back to the floor of her ruined home, and Emilia was surprised to see through a ruined window that the woman was already at the stone wall that surrounded the simple stone cottage, walking with purpose into the trees- into the darkness beyond them.

  She hesitantly shouldered the pipa, feeling the sturdy canvas strap, the elegant but simple brass buckles holding everything in place. She fit it over her shoulders, and stumbled her way through the dissipating rain to her family’s storehouse, grabbing a few bits of food, and stuffing them into her work-bag next to her candles.

  She stared at the ruins of her life, as the blossoms of the dkaro trees wilted around her.

  In the dark of the rain, she fell to her knees, and wept.