Deep Roots (Iris' Atlantis 2)

"Here. Here is a good spot. Lots of green. And the lake. It's a good lake. Shard, you can put her down for a spell. Help Moth with the digging."

I looked over the small lake. From where I stood I could just make out the small gap in the reeds on the other shore where the witch maintained her little swimming pass. Or at least I thought I saw it.

The last time I had stood on this side of the lake had been with Rose and Lily's father. I had shovelled the hole with Shard Green Heart back when we had both been young and the Old Man had been hardly gray.

We had come to do what the Old Man had brought us to do and dug a hole in the ground. We had left Lily there and sworn never to tell a soul.

Of course the whole village had known. But the Old Man had known it was one thing to strongly suspect and another thing to have evidence.

I glanced to my right.

Shard looked too over the water. Master Green Heart. He seemed gray. It wasn't just his thinning silver mane but also the gray long coat he was wearing for the fresh morning. He had cried and his eyes were circled with red. But his chin was set, as if he had decided to plunge himself head first into the cool lake.

Slowly, I turned to look behind myself.

We, me and Shard, we were now the Old Men.

But Bramble was neither one of us. He had crossed his muscular arms over his chest. The shovels for the task ahead rested against a huge willow. He clearly wasn't going to be the youth to dig a hole for a magical planting.

My son hadn't said a word the whole way up here from Rose's house. He had carried the shovels up here. And after that we had waited in silence.

Master Green Heart had come soon after us. He had come from Fig's house. When he had said to me over phone that he would get Fig's corpse, I hadn't asked how. I had nodded. On the phone.

And there was the vampire. Plume stood with his spine erect. His shirt was too thin for the early hours and overcast day. His heels ridiculous. He didn't look like a man who had carried a dead body for kilometers along nonexistent trails. Except, of course, that he still held in his arms the old librarian.

He had directed his red eyes down to the face of the woman who had passed away last night. A troubled look played on his face. Not sad, or disgusted. Troubled.

"Are you sure she is dead?" He asked. "She doesn't even look like a real corpse. And there is this... feeling that there is something..."

I sighed.

"It's complicated," Master Green heart said. "As I explained to you as we walked. We are not going to bury her. We'll plant her. You can put her down now. I don't think she minds."

Plume made a face but let her down on the dew-strewn ground.

Then we all looked to Bramble.

My son was watching over the lake. And he talked to the lake when he said:

"If you think I am going to dig Fig into the ground here, you are wrong. I am not going to do it. This is taking the whole elf-nonsense too far. I get that she is dead, and it doesn't really matter what we do to the body. But I am not going to do anything to it." He gestured to the shovels he had carried. "I am not going to stand in your way. By all means, do it yourself."

I sighed again, heavily.

We exchanged glances with the old painter. We had done it once. We would do it again. The earth was hard. We knew it. It might take us all day. It had taken most of the day last time as well. And that had been decades ago.