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Later civilizations found that there were three things the Undead could not withstand without decaying: fire, georound Since then, each society has discovered neays of preventing the Undead froolden ratio--coffins and pyraround--burials and catacombs Each of these rituals was created for one sole purpose--to let our children rest

Over tirained in society that people forgot why they were perfor adults--was buried or cremated, and no one remembered that children could rise from the dead

The words blurred as tears filledhand, I wiped the dead in a field flooded azed at the pictures, unable to look away To illustrate the burial rituals, Descartes had drawn diagrams of each tradition, with steps next to it One was a six-sided coffin, around which Descartes noted how it had to be made of a hard wood, nailed shut, and buried no less than six feet beneath the earth This hy Dante didn’t go underground It wasn’t a childhood trauo underground because he couldn’t; otherwise he would die for good

I skirams and rules of the pyrains were all kinds of notes about the kind of gauze that had to be used, the nun of the eometric orientation

They were all familiar to me from History class, as h I had never considered their purpose

The next draas of a body with coins on its eyes, resting on a funeral pyre The use of coins, Descartes explained, was a discovery of the Greeks, and were given to the dead so they could pay the boatman on the river Styx to take them to Hades Beloas a picture of a child with cloth stuffed in hisMy parents couldn’t have been Undead; they were adults So ould they have died that way? And what did their deaths have to do with any of this?

V OF LATIN AND ITS EXTINCTION

Latin is the language the Undead speak In ancient ti of the Roman Empire, before people discovered burial rituals, Latin was only spoken by children It was the one way to tell as Undead and as alive

In Roinal founders of Rome Their names were Romulus and Remus, and they were brothers While this is a co educated society, what most are not aware of is that Ro both drowned in the River Tiber before rising again

Before the founding of Roe of the existence of the Undead was not prevalent

Ro their incredible abilities in large public gatherings People were awed at their inhu powers, their inability to be killed by noruistic skills, and believed the children to be sent froods to found their city

However, they quarreled over ould be king Ro of Ro it not only to children, but to adults of the upper class ere involved in governy adopted Latin Since Latin came so naturally to the Undead, they believed it had to be a language sent fro to find his lost soul, and worried that the other Undead in Rome would accidentally take it He thus instituted burial rituals and funeral pyres to rid the city of the Undead

Skies, I skipped ahead to the part on its decline

With the spread of Protestantism and the reform of the Catholic Church, Latin slowly died out, replaced by the Root about the Undead and, consequently, the origins of Latin Thus, it cae ceased to exist Of course, one realizes that a language can only become extinct when the people who speak it have been exters that came to mind when I heard those na about the headmistress’s office It couldn’t be a coincidence The rest sounded vaguely fah attention to fully comprehend what Professor Lumbar had meant Still, Latin wasn’t my concern Cassandra was Undead Benjaain Buried And the school’s ad it up Why?

And then there was Dante My Dante Undead Dante Slowly, everything began to , every subtle turn of phrase, every unexplainable moment--the séance, the paper cut, the way I felt when he touched ht of the séance because I had accidentally conjured hio in the tunnel with me His Latin was perfect, but he told ht about what Professor Lumbar had written on the board on the first day of class Latin: The Language of the Dead "I just woke up one ht in the classrooic, the rest of the Latin club--Gideon, Vivian, Yago, and Cassandra-- He didn’t use a blanket and he rarely wore a jacket unless he knew I ht need it He kept his s open even in the winter and seemed impervious to the weather

And he never slept He rarely ca hall He wouldn’t kiss me on the lips And when he touched me, the world blurred, sounds and snizable dissonance Maybe that hy I always felt hen I was around hi the sensation from my body into his

But if I accepted the fact that my boyfriend was dead, what did that mean? Did these sensations happen to everyone as around him? Suddenly I felt weak I crawled into bed, where I stared at the ceiling and thought about death and life and everything in between, until the sun cracked open its eye

On Christ, Dustin knocked on my door "Miss Winters," he said cheerfully "Breakfast"

I didn’t randfather had adead--which is what I kneould feel like if I attempted to stand up