Lorenza’s Bones

Illustrations by Eric J. Lee

My name is Lorenza, and I have not been able to speak since the day I died. For a while, I imagined that my voice would return, that it would well up out of the ground and echo through my hollow armor.

It never did.

Instead I drifted, voiceless, rootless, from sunrise to sunrise inside my small apartment, unsure as to my own existence. I could no longer hear myself, no longer smell, no longer feel; how could I be sure I was here?

I still lived with Maria in the College then, which is why I heard of Senior Researcher Goya’s death from her rather than the bulletin. I had been sitting, reading about mycorrhizal associations among the furthest root hairs of the God-Tree, when Maria burst into the room.

“They found Goya’s body down by the river,” she said, breathless, a dampened handkerchief flecked with the pollens of spring clenched in one hand. “The constable wants to talk to you, because you know more about this sort of thing.” She gestured at me, and then added, perhaps and hopefully despite her better judgment, “I mean, since you have experience with sorcery.”

A polite way to avoid calling me a sorcerer outright. After I had returned, dead, there was a brief trial; but whether my un-life was a curse from the forest or the last protection of…