Page 63 of Aftermarket Afterlife

“What’s going on?”

She grimaced, gesturing to the priests on her knees. One began to groom its whiskers, which were long and black, matching the fur on its body. The other simply continued to watch her politely. “I’m trying to make them understand what’s going on, but it’s like they don’t want to listen to me,” she said, frustrated.

“It’s been just as long for them as it has for me,” I said, and walked over to kneel beside her. “Do you mind if I try?”

“Be my guest,” she said, leaning back on her hands and making space for me to address the mice.

“Hello,” I said. “Do you know who I am?”

“HAIL!” shouted the mice. “HAIL TO THE PHANTOM PRIESTESS!”

“Excellent,” I said. “So you know I’ve been here for the departure of two Priestesses and two Gods, when they passed from this world into the next.”

“We do, Priestess,” squeaked the black mouse. “For did not the God of Uncommon Sense say, ‘I Don’t Know What I’m Going To Do Without Her’ before the burial of the Patient Priestess?”

“I oversaw his departure as well,” I said. “And the departures of the Violent Priestess, and the God of Unexpected Situations. They were all known to me, and are known to me still, living in the chambers of my memory.”

The mice murmured agreement, acknowledging my place as a family authority.

“The Precise Priestess has come before you to tell you a great and terrible truth,” I said. “Why do you refuse to hear it?”

“Because, Priestess, if the Silent Priestess has departed, it will change everything,” said the other priest, a brindle mouse with a large white blotch over one eye. “She was ours and we were hers and we will always be hers and she will always be ours.”

“Yes, but she’ll be yours in a different place,” I said. “I’m so sorry, and it’s not fair, but the Silent Priestess has departed for the lands beyond this one, and all the faith in the world won’t bring her back to you. Like the Violent Priestess before her, she has not chosen to linger here, but has made her departure in quickness and ease.”

The mice drooped, whiskers sagging.

“I was with her at the very end,” I said. “After her body had died, as her spirit was deciding whether or not to stay, as I’ve done, and haunt her family. And she said, ‘Tell them you found me, and tell them I’m okay; tell them I loved them so much it hurt sometimes.’” Those weren’t her last words, but her actual last words felt private, like they were meant to be reserved for me alone, and I didn’t want to share them. Especially not with the mice, who would never let them go. “She chose to move along, and not to haunt the living. She lived a good life and she died a good death, and her afterlife is hers alone to do with as she wills. We honor her by respecting that choice.”

The two priests of Jane’s order drooped, further and further with every word, until they were down on all fours like ordinary mice, their noses pointed at the denim-covered flesh of Annie’s leg.

“We are left,” said one.

“She is lost,” said the other.

“Woe,” wailed all the mice as one, and it should have been comic, almost, should have been one of those cartoony moments to hang a laugh upon, but it was somehow heartbreaking and tragic, the sound of nonhuman intelligences trying to express inexpressible grief. The two priests scampered down the sides of Annie’s legs to join the rest, and were quickly swallowed up by the crowd of the congregation. I leaned closer to Annie, offering her my hand.

“We should go.”

“What? Why?”

“Because this is where they begin their mourning, and it’s not for us,” I said. “They need the space to be sad without us projecting our human sadnesses on top of them, and they need to decide what they’re going to do next.”

Annie took my hand, and together, we stood.

“The family histories say the priests of a dead god or priestess sometimes take their own lives.”

“Yes,” I said, although I privately questioned the word “sometimes.” I had never known a senior priest to outlive their chosen deity by more than six months. The grief swallowed them alive, and snuffed out the fire in their tiny hearts. Aeslin mice are smaller than people. They sometimes seemed to have room for only one feeling at a time. And right now, grief was taking up all that space. Everything else would have to wait its turn.

The mice began beating the drums inside their temples, and wailing filled the air as the news of Jane’s death passed from home to home. I led Annie quickly to the exit, and followed her down the ladder to the floor below us. She glanced up as I pushed the ladder back into place.

“That was harder than I expected it to be,” she said. Then, suddenly seeming to realize what my presence meant, she asked, “Did you . . . ?”

“She’s in the barn,” I said. “I need some help getting her back up on the table. She’s too heavy for me to lift alone.”

“She’d smack you so hard if she heard you say that,” said Annie, sounding halfway amused.

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess she would. Anyway, can you come help me? I need to talk to you.”

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