Rag-and-Bone Man

Throughout the Northern Marshes, there was a need, often felt but rarely discussed, for the unsavory labor of disposing or reusing the miscellany of the recently dead. The clothes that a man had died in, the remains of skinned and eaten animals whose more useful parts were gone, the remnants of misfortune like broken glass, bloodied bandages, and bottle-dregs; these were the parcels too filthy or macabre to be scavenged by even the neediest of settlers who dotted the dreary bogs between the Inland Plains and the Ridge. So, like all labor too important to ignore and too distasteful to ask of your family or neighbors, the work was done by wanderers whose part and parcel were odd-jobs.

The need for this work was universal; nobody wanted the bloody, hole-torn shirt of a wolf-torn neighbor or the bile-stained linens left behind by victims of a plague, and properly disposing of such items was hard work, and just as filthy as bothering to clean or repair them. Yet, the items remained all the same, and were only a few hard hours of scrubbing and sewing from being whole again. And while nobody in town would use such items, tainted as they were by the specter of a local death, what would be the harm if the things were patched by a stranger, and taken away to be sold elsewhere? So, the practice of bone-picking continued, and untidy work made a tidy profit for those wanderers who were willing to play the role.

Yet despite the ubiquity of the practice, each of the towns in which Roen had plied his newfound trade had a different name for him, and different superstitions: in Brimley, they had called him a "Rubbisher," yet four miles down the road in Sumber, they said "Bone-Bagger". In Hardmill, it was "Rag-and-Bone Man", and in Fenmoss, simply "Raggen." In Ultric, where the Marshes met the Ridge, they had called him a "Graveyard Shepherd," apparently a calque from the language of the Ridgemen. There, he had found a people who, among the marsh-dwellers he had met, had the most respect for his work, which was to say, they made him feel acknowledged, if not particularly welcome. Here in Beckiln, a town whose name stuck in his throat whenever he attempted its pronunciation, they called him a "Shoddyscrape," and made it clear whenever possible that he was very welcome to leave before nightfall.

A mere three weeks ago, their contempt would have frightened him into leaving, despite the dangers of camping alone in the bog, but Roen had become numb to the revulsion of strangers. He had learned a new shade of hatred during his travel, a special kind of distaste and distance that otherwise well-meaning and hard-working folks held for the few people they could fairly consider below themselves. They hated him being there, hated that he was taking the belongings of their dead; yet they would not chase him out of town. They would not brandish steel or flint against him. He was beneath those kinds of threats. They saw him, not as a wolf, but as a rat. Or perhaps a mosquito, of the type that was painfully abundant in this accursed place where nothing stayed dry. He was no threat, only a particularly annoying part of the ecosystem. Disgusting and inevitable.

He thanked the sharp-eyed woman who had acted as his guide as she left him to his bloody work. She spoke no word of acknowledgement, nor did Roen expect one. What was she to say? "You're welcome?" It would have been a foul lie. Roen was here to pick at the pockets of her dead uncle and wrap him in linen for his funeral pyre. A mange-ridden dog would have been more welcome. Steeling himself for the familiar stench of the newly departed, Roen unlocked the door with the young woman's key and, with considerable exertion of will, made himself enter the house.

The place was as dark and as rank as he had expected. The windows had all been covered with black cloth, and he was likely the first person to enter the house since the girl had found the body the day before. Drawing out a tightly wrapped bundle from his pocket, he took a pinch of the dried herb mixture and placed it in the center of a small, clean cloth, then tied the corners of the cloth behind his face, creating a scented mask. He had only met a pair of other Rag-and-Bone men since his travels started, but they had been in poor health-- there was a good reason this work was left to the poorest and least-loved of strangers. The herbs would protect him from the dangers which his training taught him were abundant when dealing with corpses. If he had the resources, he would have preferred citrus oils to protect against miasma, but for the time being, there was nothing for it.

Finding his way up the second floor and into the bedchamber, Roen began with an examination of the body. An old man, likely past his sixtieth year but not yet to his sixty-fifth, bald from the top of his head down to the level of his ears, where he retained a monk-like horseshoe of greying but well-trimmed hair. Pulling back the man's eyelids, the discoloration of the eyes told Roen that his liver had been in an early stage of dysfunction. He would have to check the stout, two-story home for alcohol, to see if...

No, actually, he wouldn't. Stirred from his reverie, Roen realized that he had begun to search for the cause of death. Old habits and familiar work were a soothing reminder of better times. But it didn't matter how this man had died. The sharp-eyed woman and the resentful townsfolk weren't looking to him for a diagnosis, or for closure. They just needed him to prepare the body and dispose of tainted goods. And he only needed to know one thing about the body.

Grimacing, he drew back his patchwork cloak to reach into one of its pockets. Sheathed in concealed leather pockets inside were two knives, the smaller of which he slowly drew out of its strap. Standing over the body with grim intent, he pried the eyelid back open with his free hand, took a deep breath through herb-laden cloth, and, with a surgeon's precision, began to slice away the skin which held the eyeball in place. Before long, tiny streams of blood dripped from his ungloved hands as he gently removed the eyeball just far enough to reach behind it with the scalpel, severing its connection to the skull.

The thing he feared and hoped to find was not hidden behind the first eyeball, nor, he soon found, was it behind the second. His relief at its absence was temporary and minuscule compared to the agony of another dead end. That made seven bodies, now. Seven bodies he had checked, and not one held the wriggling thing that he knew would lead him to that other world. Not one, not since... that day...

Roen considered, not for the first time on this journey, that he might simply be going mad. What a relief it would be, not to have seen what he saw, not to have pulled that unworldly thing out from behind her eyes. Not to have lost them, so far beyond his reach, beyond even the world he knew was real.

Perhaps he was insane. Time would tell. For now, even if he was, he was insane and hungry, and quite poor. He wrapped the body first, placing the severed eyes back into their sockets underneath the tight linen, then checked the house for what scraps he would be allowed to take with him. The clothes and sheets would be clean and sellable in short order, so long as he didn't tell the next town where he got them, and though the pockets of the man's sleeping clothes held nothing worth taking, who among the townsfolk was to say that they didn't contain, say, the coins he found hidden underneath the plates in the cupboard, or the fine silver ring atop the writing desk?

Dragging the heavy body carefully down the stairs and to the front door, Roen prepared to face the icy, begrudging courtesies of the townsfolk of Beckiln. He removed his mask, using the cloth to bundle and pocket his less-legitimate finds, and made sure his knives remained hilted and hidden. When at last he opened the door, he was greeted by the silence and darkness of the moonlit marsh.