Archive of Our Own

Day One Zero

[Written in a child’s script, careful and neat]

Father always said that if one has a hypothesis, one must test it.

I think that there is something wrong with me.

And I think that it is George’s fault.

George was my friend until three months ago. I would even have said he was my best friend. But we are ten years old now, and I made the mistake of telling George that I do not like some of the games he has started playing. I do not want to tease the younger children. I do not want to go where we have been told not to go.

It’s not that I am a ‘goody-goody’ or ‘scaredy-cat’ or ‘yellow-belly’, as George hypothesized over the last few weeks. And I am not one who runs to the adults authorities to report what isn’t hurting anyone. But when people are being hurt, one must act. Mother tells me that all the time, and it is a rule that I do not want to break.

It is a rule that has led to the breaking of my friendship with George, and I hypothesize that he is a worse person than I ever would have imagined.

I need to get to the point, though. This is one of Father’s old journals, and I do not want to fill it with useless drivel. I want to do what Father would have done, and record my findings.

I think I am a wonderworker.

And I think that my wonder is a curse instead of a blessing.

What transpired was this:

George invited me to dine with his family tonight. I agreed, hoping that we could be friends again. More fool me

As soon as the stew touched my mouth, I knew. I understood that this invitation was cruelty, not comfort.

[Traces of water damage stain the page, causing the ink above and below to run]

I am writing things all out of order. Father taught me to record things carefully, but there is so much—I must do my best, though.

Hops was a rabbit that I found in the forest last summer. George helped me to save her. I do not know if it was a fox or a cat or some other small predator that sank teeth into her, but she was strong enough to escape, and I wanted to give that brave little heart a chance to heal.

She did. She has been my friend and companion for over a year now. She has been George’s friend and companion.

He killed her. He held her in his hands, and he stroked her back, and he whispered into her ears. She couldn’t understand his words, and so I heard them only as a rumbling comfort.

And then he broke her neck.

He did it cleanly. He has been hunting with his father and older brothers for years.

He killed her, and he fed her to me.

I knew that even before he told me, gloating.

I felt it the moment my teeth sank into the meat.

I died with her.

I stared at George as he explained what he had done, and his voice faltered. I think he expected more of a reaction. But I was as paralyzed as poor Hops had been, though my heart still kicked in my chest.

I stared at him, my best friend turned tormentor. And I must have unnerved him, because he grabbed another bit of meat and shoved it in my mouth.

And I died again.

Hops died again.

I fainted after that, and George’s father had to carry me home. I whispered in his ear what George had done, and the two of us examined Hops’ hutch, confirming what I knew in the very core of my heart.

Hops is gone.

And I tasted her death.

I will have to see if it happens again, or if it was only because Hops was so dear to me that I was able to do this terrible thing.

I will record my findings as I discover them, and may all the gods have mercy on me. I did not ask for this gift. I do not want it.

I hope that it is not what I think it is.

I hope that in my next entry I am able to explain that I was wrong in all my suppositions here.

But we will see what future experiments bring.

Day One Two

I am unsure how to label the days of my experiment. Father originally told me that when one first decides to start an experiment is day zero, and one should start recording immediately, but he also said today that the first experiment is day one, so I am unsure now.

No matter. Yesterday I tasted Hops’ death. Today I tasted a chicken’s.

I was fine eating eggs and toast this morning. Is it because the eggs have such small lives, when they contain any at all? Since I seem to get the awareness of the creature dying, must there be an awareness there in order for my gift-curse to work? Are plants unaware, or has the toast simply been through too many steps so the death has been baked away, or is it that their awareness is so alien my mind cannot even bend around it?

These are the types of questions Father would ask.

These are the types of questions I must answer.

I enjoyed my breakfast thoroughly, especially after the mess that was last night’s dinner. I wondered if perhaps what happened with Hops was instead some terrible miracle. But then dinner was served, and I sat down to a lovely chicken baked with potatoes and carrots. My mother makes the best food.

As soon as I bit into the chicken, it happened again.

The bird was a rooster—a mean one, at that. One of our neighbors, who has not raised chickens before, gave the bird to my mother after he proved too rough for their small hens. My mother has had good luck with roosters, but this one was just mean.

As my teeth bit into the juice-rich meat, I was no longer myself. The world seemed much bigger, but I had no fear. I knew that I was strong, and that I could hurt anything that tried to hurt me or my hens.

But then something gripped me, fast and sure, and there was a twist, a pop—

I did not throw up the bite that I had eaten, but it was a near thing. I must have showed some distress, though, because my mother asked sharply, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I insisted. I do not want to explain anything to her until I am certain; until I have run experiments like Father would.

She eyed me uncertainly, but took another bite of her dinner.

I swallowed, desperately wanting to eat, uncertain what would happen if I did.

Eventually hunger—and the knowledge that the meat was so delicious—won out over fear. Or perhaps I can be kinder to myself, and say a desire for knowledge won out over fear. I took another bite.

The experience was exactly the same. No longer; no shorter. No more pain; no less.

I didn’t manage to keep this bite in my mouth, gagging it out onto my plate.

My mother leaned towards me, all concern, her hand patting my shoulder. “Did you choke? Was there a bone you missed?”

I swallowed the saliva in my mouth, and managed a weak smile. “Not sure,” I said, which was true enough.

I did not force myself to try another bite. I know that two is not a very significant sample size, but it was such an unpleasant sensation… I managed to eat everything that was not the chicken, and offer my plate to the dog before I could be found out.

I’m not sure how I am supposed to eat if I will be forced to relive the death of every creature I might consume.

How long can someone live on eggs alone?

That might be the next experiment that I have to undertake.

Day Three

It is worse than I thought.

I didn’t touch the meat yesterday. I kept my fingers far away form it, perhaps a reaction to having lived through the rooster’s death.

Today I touched the fish that I was trying to feed to the dog, and that was all that it took.

Just a brush of my fingers over the soft white meat, and I was being yanked by my mouth up through the water, I was struggling, gasping, drowning in air, and then there was a sharp smack, the breaking of all my bones—

I think I screamed this time. Certainly Mother was more concerned than she had been yesterday, and demanded to know what was wrong with me.

I lied to her again, telling her that I had gotten a splinter.

Am I a coward?

I do not know how to run an experiment on that.

I do not know how many more experiments I can run before I am found out.

Day Four

I can touch leather.

That is good.

I can touch leather, and I can touch dead and dying plants. I can eat plants, and milk, and eggs. I will not starve, and I will have clothes to wear.

I don’t think I can touch anything that is closer to being alive than leather.

I’m scared.

Father would tell me to continue running the experiment; to find the edges of my curse, and see how I can work them to my advantage. But I am scared, and I am hungry, and I am afraid of what is going to happen.

I have to tell someone.

I have to do something.

I just don’t know what.

Day Five

I told Mother, and she wrapped me in her arms and held me tight, and called me foolish child though I am almost eleven years old, and promised me that we would find a way to make things right.

“You mustn’t tell anyone else,” she instructed me, brushing hair away from my eyes. “You must keep this our secret, do you understand?”

I nodded, because I had understood instinctively that I must not let anyone know, and simply having one person on my side now was a blessing.

“The priests of the Hanged Mother will be the most dangerous. They will call this demonic possession, and their cure will involve fire and death.” I don’t think Mother was talking to me as she muttered these words, but they frightened me to my core anyway. “We could try going to the Rat, but we aren’t near one of the cities where they have power…” Shaking her head, she gathered me to her chest and held tight. “Don’t worry, little one. I will find somewhere you can be safe, and I will help you keep this secret; study this secret gift of the gods.”

I started crying, then, even though I am very nearly a man now—must be a man, since Father is gone, and I am the only man of the household.

I cried into my mother’s shirt, and she stroked my hair, and when finally we both straightened, I felt a hope I have not since Hops’ death contorted my own limbs.

Day Eight

I keep making mistakes.

I didn’t realize how often I interacted with things that had been alive before this curse began.

Mother says I should not call it a curse. It is a gift, she says. A work of wonder. But I do not think there is anything wondrous in death. I think there is only pain, and confusion, and fear, and I should know.

I have died so many times in the last week.

I think I will die many more times before I learn to control this.

Assuming it is something that can be controlled, but as Father would say, one cannot know until one has tried.

And I intend to try very hard.

Day Eighteen

We are moving.

We have packed all the boxes, and hired the wagon.

We have said goodbye to our neighbors, and I have said goodbye to my friends. I flinched from most of their hugs, afraid that my gift will grow again—that I will start seeing deaths that haven’t happened instead of only those that have.

That was only foolishness and fear, though. There was only awkwardness, and exhortations to keep in touch, and an awareness that it is unlikely to happen. How many people have left the village? How many have returned? How many do we still hear of?

And that is people who are running towards something, not away.

“We are not running away,” Mother said firmly. “We’re just starting again, so that we can control your gift better. And maybe working our way towards those I would trust to assist you.”

I nodded, trusting her.

Does the fear that still lurked in my chest mean that I am becoming a man?

Day Twenty-Two

Mother presented me with black leather gloves today.

“You must wear these when you are out and about,” she said quietly. “It will keep you from accidentally touching anything that was living; keep you from looking like you’re having fits. I will be careful with what I cook, to ensure you always have food available that you can eat. You can tell your new friends that you have a sensitive stomach, and cannot always eat well; that you have sensitive skin, and must protect your hands. You are pale enough that they will believe you.”

I nodded, swallowing down the certainty that I would not be able to make new friends.

I would have a life. Surely that would be worth whatever I lost along the way.

Day Twenty-Five

Our new home is not so different from our old home.

We are closer to Archenhold, but most of the day to day movement of the people around the village are the same. Work the fields. Care for the animals. Clean and mend and chatter while all of this is done.

I ran some experiments today. I thought that perhaps being in a new place would change some of what I discovered earlier.

It did not.

Will I ever learn to control this power? Mother says it will come in time, or that I will learn to live with it as it is.

I do not like that assertion.

Perhaps I will keep experimenting. As Father would say, no harm can come from more knowledge.

Day Twenty-Six

I have discovered a few things.

1) It is worse eating a food than simply touching the meat. This is good to know for the future.

2) If I attempt to see a death too many times in a row, I will pass out. It is a high number of deaths that must be seen—I made it to twenty-two before collapsing, and think that I was unconscious for approximately one hour and twenty minutes.

3) If I see too many deaths in a row, I will dream of them, making what sleep I do get restless and unpleasant.

I think I will take some time before running another experiment.

Day Three Thousand Six Hundred and Seventy-Six

[In a neat scrawl, easily read]

It has been ten years since I last used this journal.

I had forgotten about it, really. If not for my mother’s passing—

But that is in the past.

I have not learned to control my gift, though I have learned to control myself. The gloves were a godsend, as was the exhortation to lean on expectations. I am a small, pale man; easy enough to convince people I am sickly.

I wonder if that easy acceptance will continue once I am a doctor?

I am in university. I am studying to be a doctor. For all that I once feared my gift growing, it seems to have stabilized with merely touch as a vector, and it remains that I cannot read anything off of living flesh. I think sometimes that it would make my job easier if I could.

Or my soon to be job.

Will it make up for the deaths I have seen, getting to save some lives? Or am I merely using the gifts my mother gave me in the way that she wanted?

We will see in time, I suppose.

Day Three Thousand Six Hundred and Ninety-Eight

I am beginning to think that I have chosen the wrong path.

I just am not sure what the right path will be.

Have I always been so bad with people? Or is it that I have grown distant and strange in my attempts to hide my wonderworking away? For that is what my touch must be, right? A bit of wonderworking, gifted by either the ancients or the gods.

I find that I preferred my anatomy classes to the more practical ones that we are taking now. The corpses did not speak; they did not lie; they did not judge. And we were always expected to wear gloves when touching the dead, whereas the living expect my flesh upon theirs.

What will it be like, the first time I have to touch one of my patients and confirm that they have died?

I am buying trouble from the future. How many people have assured me that this is a foolish thing to do? How many times have I sworn that I would no longer do so?

It is so easy to make promises to oneself, and even easier to break them.

Day Three Thousand Seven Hundred and Forty-Five

It wasn’t as bad as I thought.

Does that say something good or bad about me?

I knew what would happen. I knew that there was no longer any light behind the eyes that stared up at me. The woman had been dying of consumption for months, and had not slept in days, struggling to breathe all the while.

It was a terrible death, and still the death itself—the cessation of pain—was a blessing.

A blessing that I was able to feel, my fingers against her throat, my teacher at my side.

I think I did fairly well covering my discomfort—is that a fair word for what I felt? For the euphoria of effort finally ceasing? For the drowning sensation that I recognize, most terribly, from those fish whose deaths I have lived, but transmuted to a human body?

I did not collapse. I did not start weeping. I went even paler, I am certain, and I stuttered slightly as I declared our patient dead.

“Well done,” my mentor said, clapping me gently on the back.

Was it well done?

Am I right in thinking that doctoring is the path for me?

I do not know. I know only that this gift-curse-wonder has controlled the trajectory of my life for nigh on four thousand days, and I am still no closer to understanding it than I ever was.

Day Four Thousand Thirteen

There is a new type of doctor being trained.

My classmates are squeamish, seeing the dead as a failure of their skills. Should I be the same?

Perhaps.

Perhaps it is a failure of imagination on my part that leads me to lust after this strange profession.

But I have long had a connection to the dead. Even when I pretend I do not, the connection is always waiting to remind me that it is there. Might this not be a sign that my skills are meant to be used in this method?

But I am putting my frantic ramblings ahead of explanation. The new type of doctor is called a lich doctor, and they examine the dead, seeking cause of death and whether or not the judiciary should be involved.

Would I stand out too much in this field? Would my gift, should I choose to use it, make me respected, or make me suspicious?

I will have to think on it more, but I am glad that I now know the opportunity exists.

Day Four Thousand One Hundred Nineteen

I fear I have uncovered something that I should not have.

It is very easy to kill someone when you have a doctor’s tools at your disposal. Just an injection; a bit of puzzlement from the patient; and a cessation of the steady heartbeat in the chest.

I did not know how to accuse Dr. Woldon the first time I suspected. He has been a respected physician for so long; he has taught so many people. He is kind, and funny, and compassionate.

And he believes that the needs of his research are more important than the lives of a handful of his patients.

Could I have saved his last victim if I acted earlier? If I took my suspicions to someone? But how does one say I suspect he tampered with the last injection? How do you explain the risks and benefits of potassium intravenously to someone who doesn’t even know potassium exists? Who, when told that there are certain elements found in some fruits that are extremely important to the proper functioning of a human body (and likely a gnole, and a rabbit, and so many others), and that having too much of them suddenly can cause the heart to seize?

I thought myself surely mistaken after the first death.

I knew I was not after the second, and so I did the only thing I could think to do.

I ran to the people my mother once said might help. I threw myself on the mercy of the Temple of the White Rat.

I fear I was likely a terrible sight, pale, wild, afraid of what words might damn me. It was not until I was settled in a room with a warm fire and a cup of a tea and a solicitor by the name of Zale that I finally found myself capable of thought and coherent speech.

“Tell me again,” Zale said softly. “What you suspect and why.”

“The White Rat is kind to wonderworkers provided they do no harm, yes?” I asked him, knowing that I could be damning myself in the process.

“The White Rat is very fond of those who use the tools they have at their disposal for the good of society,” Zale answered gently.

And so I told them. I explained, for the first time in my life to someone outside my family, what I could do. I shivered as I did so, clutching my tea, afraid of what Zale would think of me; of what they would say.

They said nothing for so long I worried they did not understand, their eyes fixed on the fire. Then finally they said, “This will be an interesting prosecution. Thank you for bringing this to us, Piper. We will be careful with your story. If I should desire you to testify, though—”

“Please no,” I whispered.

Zale merely nodded. “I understand. We will see what we can do with our lich doctors, then.”

I sagged in relief, and found myself being given an extravagant—and completely vegetarian—meal before being ushered back out of the Temple.

I hope that I have done the right thing.

I do not know that I could have done anything else, not after feeling my heart seize needlessly in my chest twice.

Day Four Thousand Two Hundred and Eighty-Nine

I have done it.

I have become a lich doctor for Archenhold.

It fits me, I think. I find myself having much less anxiety about my dead patients than I did about my living ones. They do not talk; and though they often come with living relatives steeped in grief, that grief is one I must just be gentle with, not handle on my own.

And I always know. Even if someone doesn’t know what killed them, their body remembers what they experienced, and between my knowledge of medicine and the body’s knowledge of its own experience… well. I think I will make a very good lich doctor.

And I think I will enjoy having the Temple of the White Rat as my allies.

But I suppose we shall see what the future brings.