Pushing Limits

When they come to the practical portion of the lesson, her instructor lifts the sheet off the table and its contents in a cloud of white linen. She must hold back a gasp when she sees, upon the table, two cadavers.

Her instructor circles the table, coming to stand on the opposite side, and fixing her with a steady gaze.

“What are the similarities between these two corpses?” he asks her.

She forces herself to look at them long enough to determine mundane features. “They’re both male. Similar height, and possibly weight. Possibly similar in age. I cannot tell. That one,” she gestures to the more dilapidated of the two corpses. “It’s too decomposed. I can’t see any of the details.”

Her instructor nods. “Good. Now focus, and bring them back for a minute.”

She turns back to the corpses and picks the more decomposed of the two. While its appearance is distracting, she resists the impulse to close her eyes and concentrates until she is looking not at the corpse, but beyond it.

She sees nothing. There is no thread of energy or breadth of life. There is no thing to call back. It is hollow. She frowns and returns her attention to her instructor. “I can’t find it.”

“Why not? Her instructor asks.

She searches the corpse for an answer. Where she would normally hear the echoes of his life, it sounds only like the emptiness of a very old palace.

“It’s empty,” she says, frustrated that she cannot properly articulate exactly what she means. “And old,” she appends.

“Precisely,” her instructor says, resting his hands on the edge of the table and leaning forward. “Resurrection has a limit. Its enemy is time. Only so much of it can pass before you can no longer perform resurrection. The stronger you are, the more you can push the limit. And you must push it.”

Art by Abigail Larson

Text by Lucie MacAulay