Page 21 of Installment Immortality

Oh, no. I hadn’t broken all the mice. But Jane’s death had broken some of them. That was heartbreakingly unsurprising. Aeslin mice who lost their divinity didn’t tend to last for very long. Every time a member of the family died, there was a spike in rodent mortality as the elder members of their priesthood either faded from grief or took matters more actively into their own paws, ending their lives rather than continue to exist in a world which no longer contained their living gods.

It was brutal. It was awful. It was the natural consequence of belonging to a species whose survival strategy had evolved to center upon a core of hyper-religiosity that would have been considered a mental illness in any other sapient species. For the mice, it wasn’t an illness or an aberration. It was just the way things were, always and from the beginning of everything, and all the way into the end.

Aeslin mice don’t leave ghosts, ever. They die and they move on to their final destination immediately, no hesitation, no fussingaround with unfinished business or unanswered questions. On my good days, I think that’s why the various Healys I’ve buried haven’t chosen to linger. They’re on their way to mouse heaven, off to be reunited with their congregations and spend eternity being worshipped by all the mice that have ever been.

Exhausting but fulfilling, as afterlives go.

“May I speak to a representative of the faith of the Polychromatic Priestess?” I asked, carefully. Elsie was still alive. Maybe her congregation would be less unnerving, or at least less dedicated to the worship of a dead woman.

Maybe it was hypocritical of me not to want to talk to Jane’s priesthood when she was gone, but I didn’t. My priesthood had been formed after I was dead, and had always accepted that fact. Jane’s priesthood had been formed to worship her as a living entity, and I really didn’t want the Aeslin to transition into a death cult while no one was looking. That sort of thing never ends the way you want it to.

The mouse bristled its whiskers and flattened its ears, displeased by my request. “Must you?” it squeaked. “This is the sacred space of the Silent Priestess, and should be Preserved as such.”

“I must,” I said. “If they won’t come here to meet me, I’ll go into the office of the God of Careful Chances and petition them there, and when they come, I’ll tell them you refused me. That out of respect for your dead priestess, you refused the request of another dead priestess, one whose seniority within the family is provably greater. I’m guessing you’re already having trouble defending your faith before the collected priests. Do you really want to add disrespect to the challenges set against you?”

The mouse shot me what I could only describe as a frustrated look, which was a fascinating expression to read on a rodent face. “Please, Priestess, wait here,” it squeaked, and scurried back into the house, slamming the door as it went inside. I didn’t even know a dollhouse doorcouldslam.

A few seconds passed, and the door opened again, allowing another mouse to emerge. This one was younger than the first, with naturally white fur that had been dyed in a variety of colorful streaks, making it look like something that had crawled out of a Lisa Frank painting and into the real world. It was wearing a crown of construction paper and brightly colored feathers, and a patchwork cloak made from a dozen different tiny scraps of stitched-together fabric. It left optical echoes when it moved, like it was too complicated of a pattern to exist in the real world. Like the first priest, it scampered up to the edge of the fence and stopped there, bowing its tiny head and folding its paw in front of its chest.

This displayed its impeccable manicure to flawless effect, and I spared a momentary thought for whether Elsie had taught her mice to do their claws, or whether she did it with them with the world’s tiniest nail-polish brush.

“Greetings to the Phantom Priestess,” it squeaked. “We had heard Rumor that you were Removed from this World and sent eternally into the Great Reward to join the Gods and Priestesses of generations lost.”

“I did get blown into the afterlife for a little while, but since I was sort of turned into ghost glitter all across the twilight, I didn’t actually go to any sort of reward, and I came back together in the end,” I said. “Sorry, still don’t know what comes next.”

“What comes Next for you may not be what comes Next for us,” said the mouse, diplomatically. “Your congregation will be overjoyed to hear that the rumors of your destruction had been Wildly Exaggerated. They have been Holding to Hope, but in light of the Unclarity which has gripped the congregation of the Silent Priestess in recent days, they were beginning to Waver in their Faith.”

“That makes sense,” I said, as noncommittally as I could. I didn’t want to get involved in an Aeslin religious dispute if I had any choice in the matter.

“How May this Unworthy Follower of the Polychromatic Priestess best Assist You?” asked the mouse.

“I wanted to get somebody to tell me, honestly, what’s been going on around here since Jane died,” I said. “I knew the place would be different, but this is like walking into a tomb.”

The mouse stood a little taller. “Do you request Plain Text Accounting?” it asked.

I blinked. “What’s that?”

“For did not the God of Chosen Isolation issue a Commandment, that we should be willing to Give Account of things he had not seen in as simple of terms as possible, that he might remain Current on Family Gossip without needing a dictionary and an hour of theological debate?” The mouse sounded proud as it finished its declaration, looking at me expectantly.

I blinked again. “Wait. You mean Arthur justaskedyou to talk like normal people, and you said yeah, sure, okay?”

“Yeah,” said the mouse.

This was staggering. I took a step backward, halfway through the desk. “Oh, man, that’s huge,” I said. “Yeah, plain text would be great. I have a lot to cover, and not infinite time. What’s the situation?”

“Well, Ted’s a widower, and he’s depressed as hell about it,” said the mouse.

There are no words to express how strange it was to hear that sentence coming out of a mouse’s mouth. I stepped out of the desk and turned solid again, so that I could lean back against it, resting my butt on the very edge and my weight on my hands. “Most people get depressed when their spouses die,” I said.

“Most people aren’t social workers,” said the mouse. “He’s having trouble controlling his pheromones, so he’s been working remotely as much as possible, and he doesn’t bathe as much as he probably should. He’s mostly been eating Pop-Tarts and whatever he can order off of DoorDash, and occasionally scrambling eggs sohe feels like he’s still a functional person. He cries a lot. We always knew he’d miss the hell out of her, but this is just sad.”

“Right,” I said, still trying to adjust to the strangeness of a mouse speaking colloquially. “And what about the kids?”

“Elsie’s pissed asfuck,” said the mouse, and the fact that it was talking about its own divinity made the words almost blasphemous, even though that had never been my faith. “She’s just angry all the time, at pretty much everybody, because she can’t decide where all that anger belongs. She’ll figure out where she wants to point it sooner or later, and then a lot of shit is going to be on fire. Metaphorically. Actual fire is Antimony’s job.”

“Are there specific people she’s more mad at than others?”

“Sarah,” said the mouse, without hesitation. “For what she did to Artie, and for not saving her mother. Alice, for not being here most of her life, and for not saving her mother. You, for not bringing her mother back from the afterlife. Kind of everybody.”

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