Keeper of the Dead

There was a girl whose name no living person knew for she was feared as a witch. Not because she cast spells, had flesh-colored a sickly green, or cackled with a broom in hand.

No, she was cursed at by strangers because she was raised by the dead.

Everywhere she touched and beneath each step of her foot, the fullest marigold flowers bloomed be it through the earth or solid wood. The trail of their golden glow drew many departed souls who followed them like moths did a flame.

None could say where she came from or from whom. With no sign of her parents left as proof of her humanity society forsook her, because her being was simply not enough for the hands that itched to point and accuse.

It was far easier for them to fear and to hate than to try and understand, let alone reach out a hand. The souls of the dead who knew better, whispered to the girl, “They will have no power in the face of death, so they must pretend to possess it in life.”

The girl grew well with the care and protection of the deceased who displayed more warmth than any person whose heart still beats. They stirred the wind to brush her hair, coaxed the land to make a house of trees, and led her to rivers with fresh water to drink.

Some of the dead taught her to tend and grow crops, others guided her hand to knit and sew, and then there were those who told her stories of knights and heroes of grand might. They told her though she had yet to meet one, there were indeed those who could be gracious and kind.

On her thirteenth birthday, she found a girl roaming the forest with only a ragged cloth over her dirt-coated skin. The two gave each other a fright and the nameless girl fell to the ground, cushioned by marigold petals, while the newfound stranger scurried up the nearest tree.

The one below collected herself and, with the advice of her spirit friends, managed to coax the stray down with the bread she had baked.

When the filthy girl warily followed her to her house of twisted trees, it was an odd sight to see. No living person had ever dared come so close, much less visited her home.

Was this the person the dead had said I would meet?

She filled the child’s belly with warm food, gave her new clothes that offered thickness and softness, and water to drink and to clean herself with.

Eventually, the stranger spoke, “I am Izel, what is your name?”

“I don’t have one. The dead said only the living should give names.”

Izel sat and pondered that thought with deep seriousness and looked back at her with a glint in her brown eyes.

“What if I gave you a name?”

After that day, the two were unable to be apart for more than a few hours, though even that much was rare. Izel, the girl of the living, and Yali, the girl with a name.

The strangers found nothing strange about each other and Yali learned what it was to share life with one whose heart also beat.

Years passed in their home that was filled with as much life as it was death, and friendship became something far harder for the two to describe. It was a closeness of peaceful moments in silence, laughter that echoed between them and the trees, and a bed that became warmer than a fire.

Had the girl who once did not even have a name, find a person to love and love her in turn? Yes… but this tale does not end with life.

Yali woke from her nap to find the sun setting the day before her twenty-ninth birthday and called out for Izel with no reply. She saw ghostly faces that had never appeared so startling with expressions of sorrow they had not made before.

There was smoke rising from a fire in the distance.

Her feet could not move quickly enough as she weaved through the thicket of branches and leaves that slapped her skin as though telling her to turn back. She did not feel the tears on her cheeks or hear her own screams or the way her ankles twisted over rocks or how her hem became soaked after trudging across streams.

Izel.

The forest behind Yali was dazzlingly bright with the veil of marigolds left in her wake. But even the souls of the dead could not see beyond the stake that was ablaze with one who was no longer living.

The mob showed its true cowardice when they started to shriek at the arrival of the witch. Yali was only half aware of them and the marigolds that sprouted with a vengeance from where she stood until they swallowed the fire and covered everything as far as the eye could see.

She approached what remained of her lover, brushing her hand over the half of Izel’s face that was not charred and kissing her closed eyelid with trembling lips. Her marigold flowers wrapped tenderly around Izel’s form until she was laid flat in a flowery tomb and Yali dropped to lay beside her.

Her flowers were not so gentle as they coiled around the necks of those who had begun to beg the witch for mercy. Then, there was a sudden silence as what once was pure gold was stained red.

With soot-covered hands intertwined, the girl stared at Izel through quivering wet lashes and whispered, “If in this life I can only keep the dead… then I hope to meet you in the next and hear you call my name, again.”

Note: In my culture, we celebrate our dead during Dia de Los Muertos, and we scatter Mexican Marigolds, also known as cempasúchiles, around their graves, over ofrendas, and as paths that lead to our homes so that their souls can find their way to visit their loved ones and return safely to their peaceful rest.