Week 6
The Book of the Emissaries
Retold from the manuscripts of the Underworld.
Four.
Mercatilla
The human footprint is a peculiar thing.
In the crypts and corners of the libraries, we have carved our names upon the walls. In reproduction, we have renamed our children after the ancestors of old, in hope of renewing their blood.
A squiggle of an initial, and a date - and a thousand years from now such letters are lost to all but the stone in which they were made.
After death, Evelyn had forgotten Mercatilla.
During a brief soujourn in the ancient British city of Bath, she had found the gravestone of the dead child quite by accident. She supposed that the museum had found it by accient, too, having recovered it from the middle of the ancient city walls.
Our ancient ancestors, it would seem, were much better at acting upon the mantra: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.
Chuck the gravestone of that baby into the wall. Baby ain't gonna know.
Bath was not quite an ordinary city. It held, she knew, a great deal of historical status, but those who lived there often criticised it for being nothing more exciting than 'nice'. The quirk of the hot spring was certainly interesting.
Mostly, she had seen, it was full of tourists on tour buses (25% of whom asked if Jesus had ever visited the baths).
"Sure," Evelyn wanted to say, "He bathed here with the hobbits and Harry Potter."
"Did they really bathe in the nude?"
"How deep is it?"
"How hot is the water?"
Never mind, she had thought, roaming the streets of a long-dead city, that they'd bothered to place glass in their windows.
"That's a lie."
"Glass didn't exist back then."
"You don't know what you're talking about."
Tucked far below ground, the gravestone of Mercatilla was displayed upon a wooden plinth.
Freedwoman, foster-daughter of Magnus. A girl who was born and died when the art of glassmaking was already a millenia old.
One Year, Six Months and Twelve Days old.
A slave given liberty.
Why?
As a living woman, Evelyn had wondered how such a thing had happened.
As an emissary, she decided to discover the answer.
Thus it was that Eveleyn - three-hundred-and-fourth emissary of the reaper - crept across the boundary between the world as if she were naught but shadow and dust.
She cut the boundaries of time and the universe in search of Mercatilla.
Mercatilla: one dead among the millions dead.
One dead, preserved in a museum.
Evelyn learned to walk across the boundaries of time for Mercatilla.
Retold from the manuscripts of the Underworld.
Four.
Mercatilla
The human footprint is a peculiar thing.
In the crypts and corners of the libraries, we have carved our names upon the walls. In reproduction, we have renamed our children after the ancestors of old, in hope of renewing their blood.
A squiggle of an initial, and a date - and a thousand years from now such letters are lost to all but the stone in which they were made.
After death, Evelyn had forgotten Mercatilla.
During a brief soujourn in the ancient British city of Bath, she had found the gravestone of the dead child quite by accident. She supposed that the museum had found it by accient, too, having recovered it from the middle of the ancient city walls.
Our ancient ancestors, it would seem, were much better at acting upon the mantra: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.
Chuck the gravestone of that baby into the wall. Baby ain't gonna know.
Bath was not quite an ordinary city. It held, she knew, a great deal of historical status, but those who lived there often criticised it for being nothing more exciting than 'nice'. The quirk of the hot spring was certainly interesting.
Mostly, she had seen, it was full of tourists on tour buses (25% of whom asked if Jesus had ever visited the baths).
"Sure," Evelyn wanted to say, "He bathed here with the hobbits and Harry Potter."
"Did they really bathe in the nude?"
"How deep is it?"
"How hot is the water?"
Never mind, she had thought, roaming the streets of a long-dead city, that they'd bothered to place glass in their windows.
"That's a lie."
"Glass didn't exist back then."
"You don't know what you're talking about."
Tucked far below ground, the gravestone of Mercatilla was displayed upon a wooden plinth.
Freedwoman, foster-daughter of Magnus. A girl who was born and died when the art of glassmaking was already a millenia old.
One Year, Six Months and Twelve Days old.
A slave given liberty.
Why?
As a living woman, Evelyn had wondered how such a thing had happened.
As an emissary, she decided to discover the answer.
Thus it was that Eveleyn - three-hundred-and-fourth emissary of the reaper - crept across the boundary between the world as if she were naught but shadow and dust.
She cut the boundaries of time and the universe in search of Mercatilla.
Mercatilla: one dead among the millions dead.
One dead, preserved in a museum.
Evelyn learned to walk across the boundaries of time for Mercatilla.