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“You h me, but you will find I am very thick, and made more or less of bone and ”
I blinked at her, and she threw off her hood, revealing a s of gray hair creeping through brown, and skin like an old blasted oak Her eyes were narrow and dark She reached behind her head and loosed a clasp, pulling the beak away from her face—she was only a woman, with a mouth and a nose and teeth like any other
“Didn’t you like et many opportunities to chat in my line of work The least you could do is chuckle a little Maybe even giggle Don’t girls still giggle out there in the world?”
“I’runted
“So aood joke”
“What do I have to do to get through?” I am afraid I was very short with her Perhaps you did better
She sighed “Youso much…”
THE
MOURNER’S
TALE
I OCCUPY A STRANGE PROFESSION IT IS ONLY slightly stranger than my previous employment I was once a mourner by trade, an avocation which harpies take particularly well to, having a screech like no other creature
Did I forget to mention? Well Don’t look under the cloak
We knohat a lament is better than any alks on five toes When we are required, we live with a corpse for weeks on end, we live with our laht of the corpse, and in the putrefying gases we detect the virtue or degeneracy of the subject Decomposition does not lie We lament not e are told to, but when the lament is finished, be it days or years hence When we can hold its hand and walk down the street of a city, showing it the grocer’s where the deceased bought her carrots and turnips, the butcher where she cut her allery where just once, a portrait of her hung, then the lah all these places to a grave, where we screech and sing and tear our hair, where we rend our breasts and howl grief into the ground
Once, in Irsil, which is poor and sad in all things save retired soldiers with broken swords and useless plowshares, we took fifteen years to rear the lah the shanties and the porches where old officers told their bloody tales to the wind, and they followed behind, falling in like ranks, to hear how the old man was mourned
It is necessary work I was good at it I suppose that is what got me here