Setti knew the woman for a ghost the moment she appeared. It was the pink hair that gave her away, short and spiky. Real people didn’t have hair like that. Also, you couldn’t see the scratch-marks on Setti’s kitchen table through real people’s torsos.

“The hell?” was the first thing the ghost said. Setti’s grandfather had tried to tell her ghost stories when she was a kid, a long time ago, but he’d had a habit of smoking and drinking too, so none of the stories had ever made any sense and Setti didn’t like unannounced visitors.

“Get out of my house,” Setti demanded.

“Um,” the ghost answered, staring at Setti with her eyes rimmed in thick black mascara, then held up a placating hand. “Okay. Just let me find...”

The ghost blinked out of existence.

Setti poked at the shiny silver disk with the tip of her mussel knife. There was nowhere else the ghost could have come from. She’d found the disk down at the beach while foraging for mussels, half buried in a mudslide but gleaming with a smoothness and lack of rust only pre-flood things ever retained. One more thing unearthed by the storm. It hadn’t been a bad storm as they went, not tearing-down-houses strong. Plenty strong to bring down the pear tree behind Setti’s house, though. Setti sniffed. Shame it hadn’t been the apple tree. She held a severe dislike for apple trees.

Setti had planned on bartering away the disk at the next market fair. Always some dumb folks about paying for useless curiosities. She poked it again for good measure, with no more reaction than the first time. Some people might even pay more for the ghost living inside it, but Setti wasn’t sure it was worth the trouble. Maybe she should toss it back onto the beach. She glared at the disk some more without reaching a decision, then turned away to grab her cane. Wasn’t like the ghost would help with planting beans or checking on her bees or getting rid of the tangle of branches and pear blossoms now blocking the back garden. She grimaced getting up, her bad knee twinging. Folk used to say you could feel a storm coming with a knee like this. The way her knee usually screamed in agony Setti figured there should have been a storm every day the last forty-five years, or maybe she simply hadn’t figured out the difference between the pain announcing bad weather and the pain telling her she’d run out of willow bark tea.

Setti hesitated in the doorway, then hobbled back to snatch up the disk and put it in her satchel. She didn’t want the ghost to get any ideas, slipping out of its home and into some of Setti’s furniture while she wasn’t looking. Who knew what ghosts might set their mind to?

Hauling up water from the well was always a pain with her bad knee. Surprising how many things you needed a painless limb for, not that Setti bothered with surprise any more. She staggered inside with a bucket of water, dumped the mussels into it so they wouldn’t spoil until evening, then left the ghost disk on a stack of firewood under the eaves before checking on her bees. Bees got angry about the strangest things, so better not risk it.

The bees were fine, still hunkering down after the storm. All the hives had survived without damage this time. Setti didn’t even bother slipping on gloves for opening the hive boxes. The bees had been furious before the storm, bad weather always got their temper up, but now they buzzed placidly, almost sluggish in the chilly breeze. When Setti returned to the house the ghost was floating in the yard.

“Figured this didn’t count as your house.” She smirked.

“Get lost, ghost,” Setti said. “I don’t have the patience for the likes of you today.”

“I’m not a ghost,” the ghost protested with indignation.

Setti rolled her eyes in disagreement and hobbled for her shed. “You’re see-through.” The only reason Setti didn’t try and walk straight through the ghost or poke her with her cane was that she’d have to go out of her way to do so and it wasn’t worth the pain just to prove her point.

A flare of anger skittered over the ghost’s expression and she crossed her arms. “For your information, I’m an upload, not a ghost.” The ghost pouted.

Setti ignored her in favor of fetching her hand axe, then dragged herself over to the fallen tree. It was a mess: broken branches, splintered trunk, white blossoms littering the ground. It had crushed a couple of gooseberry bushes, at least two of them beyond hope, but Setti figured with some luck she might save the other two. Not that luck was too keen on her, in general. The only reason the pear tree hadn’t crushed the house was because it had been planted too far away for that to be even remotely possible. Setti glared at the tree for a bit, just for satisfaction. The ghost hovered next to her, somewhat sulky at being dismissed so easily.

“Hey, you. Old lady. Could you at least tell me where I am and what fucking year it is? My display is glitching.”

The old lady’s mouth twitched with annoyance, partly at the ghost, and partly at the tree. She chopped at some of the branches more out of resentment than any hope of stripping them off the trunk. “Samsonville, 313 A.F.” Why was she even talking to the ghost? Might as well invite her in and offer her a cup of tea with sugar cubes.

“Shit. That helps exactly not at all.” The ghost hunched her shoulders as if the chill wind cut through even her insubstantial form.

A tangle of dead gooseberry branches tore at Setti’s skirt as she tried to step closer to the trunk, ripping the hem. Her cane slipped off dead leaves and she flinched with the sudden weight on her bad knee.

“Don’t you, I don’t know, wanna get help with this?” The ghost peeking over Setti’s shoulder looked ridiculously out of place in her make-up and pink hair.

With a thump the old woman buried her axe in the trunk and rounded on the ghost. Who’d asked her anyway? She’d just shown up out of her shiny disk and started pestering Setti without prompting. Setti didn’t need a ghost. Setti didn’t need anyone’s help, anyone’s pity. “You want to lend a hand?”

“Kind of handicapped here.” The pink-haired woman waved her fingers through a tangle of leaves, then shrugged.

Of course it would only be Setti who’d gotten caught in the gooseberry thorns. The ghost floated a few steps backward to take in the hill Setti’s house sat perched upon. The neat rows of onions, leeks and kale in her vegetable garden, the gnarly fruit and sprawling nut trees, the scraggly oaks in the distance. You couldn’t see the village from here, which suited Setti just fine. Nothing but a trail of smoke from the bakery chimney reminded her of its existence.

“What about him?” Setti followed the ghost’s pointing finger toward a lonely figure a couple of hundred meters away, right on the edge of where the hill dropped abruptly into a ragged cliffside. Romantic view of the Fingers, the wreckage of a pre-flood city shedding rust and broken glass into the sea that had swallowed it.

Setti squinted. “Just some loner kid who hides from the village folks. Sits there all the time, whining and feeling sorry for himself.”

The ghost gave her a pointed look as if to say they weren’t so different, Setti and the boy. The old woman scoffed in contempt. She felt plenty of sorry for herself, but at least she succeeded in moaning and working at the same time.

“Not like people would just pop in to help me,” Setti grumbled, turning back to the tree. “Out of the goodness of their hearts. What kind of world do you think we’re living in?”

The ghost didn’t reply, just stared at Setti with the strangest expression on her face, somewhere between hurt, anger, and defiance, then vanished in the blink of an eye.

“I’m Jasmin,” the ghost introduced herself.

Setti kept methodically pulling off the mussels’ beards to prepare them for eating, one by one, and ignored her. She shouldn’t have put the disk back inside the house, but she still thought it would fetch a decent price and leaving it unattended seemed like an invitation for trouble. It wasn’t like the ghost would stay. Setti was very good at making people not want to stay.

“What’s your name?” The ghost floated in front of Setti, turning in excited little circles while she scrutinized the kitchen furniture, the mussels, even the garlic drying in the rafters, with apparent interest.

“Setti. Go away.”

The ghost, Jasmin, shrugged. “Don’t worry, I won’t be around too long. My battery is at point three percent. Is this your house? What are you doing with the shellfish?”

“I should throw you back into the ocean to shut you up sooner,” Setti replied. Cleaning the heap of mussels was starting to hurt her fingers and her knee still throbbed from her effort with the axe that afternoon. She was in an even sourer mood than usual.

Jasmin shrugged again. “That would probably do the trick. Or not. This fucking handheld is pretty sturdy. Maybe I’ll see some fish.”

Setti rolled her eyes at the flip answer. For a blessed minute the ghost ran out of things to ask and both women listened to the meditative crackle of flames in Setti’s stove. The silence didn’t last too long.

“You said it was 313 A.F. What’s A.F. stand for?”

No idea how to keep their mouths shut, these young people. Not even if they were ghosts.

“After the flood.” Setti shifted around in her chair, trying to find a comfortable position for her knee. Futile, as always.

“Oh. My. God. Fuck.” The ghost dropped her butt onto the table, something Setti would have protested sharply had Jasmin been even remotely corporeal. “No wonder the date is glitching. My time, we didn’t even get rain in most places any more, never mind a flood. And the sunken ruins out there…” Jasmin buried her face in her hands. “Damn it. I was hoping… What did you say? Three hundred years at least. Not even my baby niece is still alive. Not even my baby niece’s baby niece.”

Setti, unimpressed, chucked a cleaned mussel into the pot in front of her. “So go haunt somewhere else.”

Utterly ignoring her words, Jasmin flopped down to stretch all across the kitchen table. “I hope this was fucking worth it.”

Setti rolled her eyes at the drama. She wasn’t about to give in and ask. Then again, it might be that asking was all it took to get rid of the ghost. Most living people would prattle endlessly about their problems given half a chance, so why should the dead be any different? “Was what worth it?” the old woman relented.

Jasmin gesticulated with one insubstantial hand to indicate her equally insubstantial body. “This. Going to prison. Being a fucking upload. They didn’t even ask our consent, you know, not even as a formality. The world was going to hell. First the cells got crowded, then the food ran low. Then… My brother woke me a couple of times, said they’d sued the prison company, sued the government, sued everyone. As if I had any illusion that’d help, with the world ending!”

“World didn’t end,” Setti interjected. Samsonville didn’t have any prisoners. Nor did any of the other communities around. Who had food enough to feed useless mouths? Better kick them out, send them to the Wastes or whatever else the bailiff did with them. Setti didn’t stick her nose in things she couldn’t change. Rumor had it there was a prison over in Treize, but not many folks ever travelled that far. Setti sure didn’t, not with her walking at the speed of a slug.

“I guess not,” Jasmin admitted. She sat up again. Her face took on a bit of color, clashing with the pink hair, but it set her eyes ablaze. “We had a shitty government. People used to vote for the shitty government, before they started simply faking elections. Hell, some people still voted for the shitty government. World went to shit. Ice caps melting, storms without any rain, droughts lasting for years, and nobody did anything but moan how it was too late anyway. People just kept doing what they had always done. They didn’t care enough to give up their comfort, their plane tickets and Argentinian steak and designer lipstick. And then when they started starving they acted as if they’d known it all along.”

Setti’s eyebrows rose at the ghost’s rant, not even trying to pick up on all the unfamiliar vocabulary. “Your words don’t match,” she said instead. Jasmin frowned, caught in the middle of drawing a breath she didn’t need. “The words and the shapes your lips make,” Setti clarified. “They don’t match.”

The ghost let out a long frustrated sigh. “Translation software.” She shrugged. “Pretty low-standard edition as well. Hell, no idea what part of the world I’m even in right now. Also, fucking three hundred years!” She scratched her spiky pink hair. “I don’t know how different language sounds after three hundred years. Maybe we’re speaking the same one and don’t even notice.”

Setti grunted noncommittally. The ghost’s explanation made no sense at all, but she’d finally finished cleaning her mussels and got up to put them on the stove. Her knee felt hot and swollen. “What did you go to prison for, anyway?”

Jasmin raised her chin in stubborn pride. “Arson. Protesting just went on and on and got us nowhere so I torched the High Court of Justice.” She turned the last word into a mockery.

“Did it burn?”

A gleam in the ghost’s eye, almost like the glint of tears. “Like cinder.”

“Hey, that boy’s still out there!” Despite Setti’s efforts, talking had done exactly nothing to banish the ghost. At least she’d ceased occupying the kitchen table.

“And you’re still in here,” the old woman grumbled in reply. She squinted at the needle and thread in her calloused hands. Dusk had started to conquer the room and the meager fire in the kitchen stove threw more shadows than light. The smell of mussel soup clung to the air.

“How old is he? Won’t somebody be out looking for him?”

Nosy, for a ghost who’d complained about an hour ago that everybody she’d ever known was long dead. What did she care? Setti sipped her willow bark tea, lips curling at the familiar, bitter taste.

“Fourteen, fifteen? Told you, he’s here all the time. Doesn’t get along with his folks.” In Setti’s opinion it didn’t take much not to get along with the village folk.

The ghost kept hovering at the window, then cocked her head. “Is he… is my micro glitching or is he singing?”

Setti fiddled with her needle, trying to fix the hem she’d torn earlier even though her fingers trembled and the stitches got ugly. It wasn’t good to be idle. Idle left too much time to dwell on how much everything hurt. “He thinks I can’t hear him from here.” He’d have a nice voice too, rich and resonating, if he’d use it for anything else but dirges. The ghost shut up for a moment, listening to the mournful snippets of song drifting on the wind.

“Why doesn’t he get along with his people?” she finally asked. Setti noticed how Jasmin had clearly not felt the need to ask why she didn’t get along with the village people.

“They want him to marry.” Setti grimaced into her tea. Wasn’t like she couldn’t understand him; she hadn’t exactly been the marrying type either. Never mind that no one in their right mind would have ever married a cripple.

“Let me guess,” the ghost replied, her voice suddenly turning a deceptive kind of calm. “He doesn’t want to marry?”

Setti wondered if Jasmin would burn down the house if she didn’t like her answer. That would at least save her from bothering with the pear tree.

“From what I heard, it’s not the marrying so much as the bride. He’d rather marry a lad from the Merieux farm than run off with a pretty village girl.” Look at this old lady, spreading gossip when she resented every painful trip down to the mill to swap honey for flour, the only place she ever came into contact with gossip.

“Seriously?” Jasmin’s words came out in a hiss. A hardness snuck onto her face, incongruous with her soft features and bright hair, and for a moment Setti had no trouble picturing her as an arsonist. “This is the fucking future I fought for? I got manhandled and locked up without trial and put in a fucking handheld for this? For a world that forces children to marry and doesn’t give a shit about what they want? And you don’t even care? I should have given up like the rest of the world and enjoyed my steak! I mean, we had a fake government and we fucked up the world, but at least you could be with whomever you wanted to be, didn’t matter if it was a man or a woman or a fucking video game character.”

Setti scoffed at the ghost’s ideals. Young people’s folly, ideals. Setti had grown out of them. The old woman turned back to her sewing and glared at her trembling hands. “Used to be different. Used to be you could marry whoever you wanted as long as you brought something to the village.” Setti was rather sure there was still some law about it, somewhere. Not that anyone cared. “Times are bad.”

Jasmin’s face morphed from furious into even more furious. Setti shrugged.

“They don’t get children any more. None of the village folk. Or if they do, they’re born dead or too early or wrong and then they die.” Setti carefully tied off her thread. The ghost blinked, her scowl lessening marginally. “Something broke in the Fingers. Something spilled. Fish tasted odd for a while. Been like this for years now and folk are getting desperate. They think we’re dying out. There’s only one family left with a child under seven and she’s got the shakes.”

Jasmin crossed her arms, outrage still etched into her frown. Floating closer, she took a suspicious peek into the pot of soup. “You shouldn’t eat these, then. Mussels absorb pollution. Must be shit for your health.”

Setti twisted her mouth in contempt. The brief flare of respect she’d held for the ghost’s conviction vanished. As if she wouldn’t know. As if anyone living off the sea wouldn’t know. “Bright little pre-flood ghost. With your pre-flood ideals and your pre-flood magic.” Setti didn’t know much about pre-flood times, but she’d heard the stories, seen the ruins. She didn’t think the ghost had ever had to scavenge for a meal, or eat seaweed and shellfish because there was nothing else edible left in early spring. “Care to tell me what else we should eat instead? Mussels might make you sick, but they’re still better than starving.”

That shut the ghost up. Her eyes flickered over Setti’s kitchen furniture again, the home-made chairs and dried herbs and threadbare rug. Setti wasn’t too badly off, having only herself to look after, and the honey was good for barter. But it was hard to grow anything in this soil, even harder when a storm took half the harvest or the rot came in like last year or half the livestock died in agony from a plague nobody had ever heard of.

Rain started to fall in a quiet drizzle while the ghost sat back onto the kitchen table, calmer, but with her eyes no less ablaze. “Then how come one kid marrying against his will makes any difference?”

Setti swallowed the rest of her tea. It had gone cold, making it taste even worse. “Don’t blame me for the village folk. Their doing, not mine.”

“I don’t see you doing anything against it,” the ghost muttered as she hovered back to the window. “Would you at least get the kid out of the fucking rain? And do me a favor: put my handheld into the sun tomorrow, I’m out of juice.”

A tremble ran through Jasmin’s projection, then another and another until the ghost conveniently vanished. Setti grunted in satisfaction.

“Ey, boy! My ghost says I should get you out of the rain.” Pain made Setti’s voice even more irritable than usual. Her cane kept slipping off the wet grass and the drizzle had turned into a downpour, soaking her shawl. Shouldn’t have listened to a ghost. To be honest, she didn’t really know why she had. Some stupid notion of proving her wrong, of proving how futile it was to offer help and expect anything to change for the better.

The boy, Kite, startled and spun around so fast he almost lost his footing on the slippery ground. That would have been a statement, him falling off the cliffside because an old woman had gotten it into her head to try and lend a hand. Kite had smooth dark skin and huge black eyes just made for daydreaming. No wonder both girls and boys down at the village mooned after him. Setti’s lips twisted at the ugly bruise marring his left cheek.

“I’m… I was… I’m sorry,” Kite stammered in the same silky voice she recognized from his singing, but quietly, barely audible over the downpour as if he wanted to keep it a secret. “I should leave…”

“Don’t be stupid.” Setti nodded in the direction of her house, then turned around without waiting for him to follow. She wanted her soup and another mug of tea and dry clothes. “You’re going to eat my food and sleep in a place where there isn’t another bruise waiting for you. Least you can do is stay until the morning and cut up the pear tree for me.”

Kite was still curled into a bundle of blankets in front of the stove when Setti woke. The old woman sniffed, torn between surprise and annoyance. She’d have figured him for a quitter, sneaking out before dawn to escape the work. That’s what she’d have done when she was his age. Not like Setti was in any shape to chase after him. But he’d stayed and now she was stuck with him, just like she was stuck with her ghost. There was a thought to cheer her up in the morning.

“Ey, boy.”

The bundle of blankets stirred, then Kite woke with a start. The bruise on his face looked worse in the harsh morning light, his cheek all swollen and purple. From the way he winced it wasn’t the only one either. Setti dropped a bowl of oats on the table for him.

“About time you start working for your food.”

She didn’t stick around to see if he would eat and instead snagged the ghost disk on her way out the door. The last thing she needed was the boy messing around with it. Her knee twinged in protest, objecting to yesterday’s treatment just like it did every day. Setti didn’t have the luxury to heed her body’s constant objections.

It barely took five minutes before Kite emerged as well, still mute as a butterfly. Setti put the axe into his hand and pointed him at the pear tree, then shuffled off to plant some beans. To her surprise it didn’t take long for the tell-tale sound of the axe to start up. Maybe the boy would actually manage to strip the tree of its gnarled branches before he winged it. Maybe he was more than a pretty voice. Setti shook her head. Shouldn’t get too optimistic. Maybe the ghost had made her go soft with her ideals and her talk of change.

With a grunt Setti settled onto the ground next to her vegetable bed. She’d tried a thousand different ways of planting seeds while bending down and none of them had worked with a bad knee. Sitting in the dirt wasn’t pretty, but it did the trick and if she had it her way there wouldn’t be anyone around to see.

The sound of chopping stopped after a suspiciously short amount of time.

“Ms. Setti?” There was a strange look on Kite’s face, excitement warring with confusion. His voice was still quiet, almost inaudible, as if he were ashamed to admit its existence.

“What? Broke something already?” The reply came out harsher than Setti had intended. She didn’t like it when people caught her helpless and there wasn’t much that screamed helplessness as loudly as crawling on the ground like a beetle on its back. Kite hunched his shoulders, but his expression didn’t waver. He must have a shitty family if this kind of answer was business as usual for him.

“There are bees.” Setti rolled her eyes, but of course the boy wasn’t finished. “Up in one of the trees. A whole bunch of them.”

With an unhappy grunt Setti groped for her cane. Bad weather for swarming bees, too cold, too windy, though obviously that fact hadn’t gotten around to her swarm. The old woman grabbed the handle of her cane and miserably botched her first two attempts at getting up. The pain in her knee brought tears to her eyes. At least Kite had the good grace to look away and pretend not to notice. Not like the miller’s son, who offered Setti his arm every time she went down to the village as if it were a courtesy to rub into her face how frail she was.

The swarm of bees clung to one of the lower branches of the walnut tree, still a good three metres above the ground. Setti watched the insects buzz and crawl over each other in their need to stick as close to their queen as possible. That’s what she got for allowing them to swarm. She’d left the extra queen in two of the hives so they would split up, with the old queen moving out in spring and half the swarm following, trying to find a new home. Setti had lost some hives over the winter and it was a neat way of replenishing them. More hives couldn’t hurt. Setti sniffed. Figuratively speaking it couldn’t hurt. Could hurt plenty, falling off the ladder.

Kite trudged after the old woman like a silent ghost, quite the opposite of the real ghost hiding somewhere in her disk. They dragged her ladder under the tree and Kite went to fetch the new hive box while Setti scowled at her cane and finally swallowed her pride.

“You afraid of heights?” she asked when the boy returned. Kite shook his head. She’d figured that already, with him constantly perching on the edge of the cliffs.

“You afraid of bees?” He hesitated for a second, then shook his head again. At least he’d stopped to think before answering, Setti had to give him that. “Think you can manage to catch the swarm?”

Kite tilted his face up to study the buzzing mass of wings and stingers, his eyes more curious than concerned, as if for all his worry he simply lacked the capacity for fear. He shrugged. “What do you want me to do?”

“Cut off the branch, carry it down the ladder, I’ll put it in the box.”

Another shrug. “Okay.”

Despite being taller than her, Kite almost vanished under the hat and veil Setti put on his head. Some people just had a knack for vanishing. She watched him climb the ladder carefully, not quite frightened but showing plenty of respect for her bees and clutching the saw in his gloved hands like a weapon. A couple of bees took off when Kite started sawing, startled by the sudden vibration. It wasn’t a heavy branch, a mere two finger’s breadth. Easy work if you had two legs to keep balance. Kite almost dropped the whole branch with its sudden weight as he cut through, clusters of bees raining to the ground and taking up an angry buzz. Setti glowered at nobody in particular. Would hardly do to shout at the kid precariously perched on the ladder, but she was somewhat protective of her swarm and she didn’t want to scrape bees off the grass for the rest of the morning. Against her expectations the boy held on, clutched the branch in both hands as the saw tumbled from his grip and clouds of bees took to the air. Setti fancied she could see the white in Kite’s frightened eyes, like a cornered deer’s.

Slowly, step by step, the boy climbed down the ladder and handed Setti the branch with trembling fingers. Setti took it without hesitation, even with her hands bare. Swarming bees were at their most docile, no brood to defend, no food stocks to fight for. It didn’t mean they wouldn’t sting if provoked, but Setti had been stung plenty in her life. A little more pain wouldn’t make any difference. She whacked the branch against the box, dropping most of the bees inside. The rest crawled around in confusion, trying to return to their queen. Setti gently brushed a few bees from the rim and closed the hive.

“All right, boy. Time to give them some space.”

“Here.” Setti pressed a jar of honey into Kite’s hands. He’d earned it, and Setti wasn’t good at thanking people. Lack of practice. She dug a bee stinger out of her hands rather than trying to think of something better to say. She’d have to wash properly to get the smell of dead bee off her before checking on the new hive again; it made the rest of them aggressive. If the boy had been stung as well, he kept remarkably quiet about it.

“Thank you for letting me stay the night,” he mumbled at last, his hands fidgeting with the jar. He kept his gaze fixed to the ground, but Setti could still spot the resignation in his eyes. Nowhere else to go now but home.

“The bees like you,” Setti said. She was as bad at giving compliments as she was at thanking people. Not much use in trying at all. “Must be your singing voice.”

At the mention of his singing Kite’s cheeks turned a bright crimson, but at least it had the intended effect of sending him on his way with nothing more than a stammered goodbye. Setti watched him scramble down the hill toward the village, strangely content. Not that he’d done much with the pear tree, but she figured catching the swarm was worth more to her anyway.

When she turned around Jasmin’s translucent body was floating at her side. “Not bad for a start.” The ghost smirked, flickered and vanished before Setti could come up with a snide remark.

Didn’t take long for the boy to return. Nor for the ghost.

“What the hell is this?” Jasmin asked over Setti’s shoulder.

“Beans,” the old woman said. The earth was still damp after a day of incessant drizzling. The cold seeped into Setti’s skirt and crawled up her bones, making her knee ache even more than usual. Cold had a way of ruining Setti’s temper. Then again, so did a lot of things.

The ghost hopped up and down like an excited child. “No, I mean…” She pointed.

“Dirt,” Setti cut her off.

“But what’s with all the colorful bits?”

Setti pushed a bean seed from her hand into the dark soil brimming with red and blue and yellow particles. It wasn’t bad soil either, as good as you’d get on the cliffs.

“That’s what dirt looks like.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Jasmin protested. “I know what…” Suddenly the ghost’s animated face turned all horrified. “Is this plastic? Shit. Micro-plastic? We really did fuck up the world.” She plonked down right in the middle of the vegetable bed and hugged her insubstantial knees. Drama queen. Setti rolled her eyes and kept on planting beans.

“Shitty battery,” the ghost mumbled, her petulant tone causing Setti to glance over. The ghost’s body had started flickering erratically, on and off in the middle of Setti’s bean patch. The old woman wondered why she’d bothered putting the disk into the sun that morning.

 “Hey, here’s the boy again.” The ghost jumped to her feet, still flickering.

Even from a distance and without seeing his face Setti could tell Kite was crying. He ran straight for his place at the cliffs, body bowed as if against a storm. Setti buried her last seed and fumbled for her cane. She could at least pretend to give the boy some privacy.

Kite’s parents weren’t about to do the same. The yelling started even before Setti had made it to the kitchen. She couldn’t make out any words, not that she had to. The cadence was clear enough.

“What the hell?” Jasmin materialized in the middle of the room. Her flickering had grown worse, distorting not only her body but also her voice, which made her sound more like a ghost than ever before. “Do something.”

Setti grimaced and hobbled for her chair. “And what exactly? Frighten them with a pink-haired ghost?” Her fingers groped for a bowl of potatoes and a knife more out of a need for distraction than any desire for preparing food.

“I’d make them piss their pants if my battery wasn’t at point one percent.” The ghost sniffed, then vanished for a whole second as if trying to prove her point. “Fucking battery.”

Setti scoffed into her potatoes and remained seated. “Then what do you want me to do? Limp over and smack them with my cane until they stop yelling? Not worth the pain. I have no claim on that boy.”

Frustration flickered over Jasmin’s body, plain even through the distortion. “Really? You’re gonna do nothing? What if he jumps off the cliff?”

Setti started peeling her potatoes. She felt more like stabbing them. “Nah. Would have done so already if he had the guts.” Quiet boy like Kite, he wouldn’t jump in front of his parents. Too much of a mess. Too loud a statement.

“But…”

A muffled thud cut them both short. Setti glanced up and found Kite sprawled in the mud, no question about how he’d ended up there with his father stooping over him. She twisted her mouth in disgust and pretended not to watch the man drag his son away. The ghost had no such qualms. She stared out the window until the family vanished out of sight, then wheeled around, hands clenched into fists.

“And you’re just sitting here, doing fucking nothing? Nothing at all?”

Even through the flickering Setti could spot the ghost’s eyes burning with contempt. The old woman pursed her lips. She’d had about enough of accusations. Girl from another time, thinking she knew so much better. Maybe in her world you could have changed things with protesting loud enough and setting things on fire. Maybe in her world you didn’t have to eat food that poisoned you, didn’t have to do what somebody else thought was best. But this was Setti’s world. In Setti’s world parents who clothed and fed you would always have the last say about your life. In Setti’s world there was nobody around to help you out of the goodness of their heart. In Setti’s world people fell off apple trees for no reason at all and got crippled for life because they landed unlucky.

“World is what it is.” Setti drew her lips back in a bitter snarl. “Nothing you can do. No use fighting it.” You could easily hate it, though. Setti had plenty of experience in hating the world.

The ghost came so close to Setti’s face the old woman imagined she would have tasted her breath, if she’d had any. Jasmin’s eyes were a pale grey and must have been almost translucent even when she’d still been alive. “Yes, the world is shit,” the ghost said. Anger bled through her voice despite the erratic up and down in volume. “The world has always been shit. Mine, yours, there’s always been shittiness, everywhere we go. And you know why? Because nobody bothers to do a thing about it. If everybody would change just a tiny little bit the world would be fine. But instead we moan and we complain and we do nothing. And so nothing will ever change!”

A bitter laugh escaped Setti’s lips. “Pretty little lies you tell yourself.” She shifted her aching knee, feeling the urge to punch it for giving her trouble but knowing from experience how much that would hurt. She wondered how many futile attempts it took for someone to realize struggle wasn’t worth the pain. How many it had taken her. “Maybe I should run down to the village for a spell, set a couple of buildings on fire. Worked so well for you, I should give it a try because you must have made the world a much better place. Look how great it turned out.”

Jasmin flinched as if the old woman had slapped her. Her eyes practically filled with tears, full of guilt and betrayal. As if whatever she’d done wasn’t hundreds of years in the past. As if anyone would still care. The distortion in the ghost’s body grew worse by the second. Convenient, wouldn’t it be, to flicker out of existence right before answering? Setti was almost surprised when instead Jasmin set her jaw as if against a blow.

“There were people inside,” the ghost muttered through clenched teeth. “Inside the Court of Justice. It was a weekend, and late. I didn’t know. Four people. Only two made it out.”

Carefully, Setti placed her peeled potato back into the bowl. The ghost refused to meet her eyes and instead stared out the window, where Kite and his parents had long since vanished.

Jasmin turned around, hugging herself like a stubborn child. “I made a mistake, okay? I paid for it a thousand fucking times. But you know what? At least I didn’t sit around on my butt pretending it didn’t matter what I do anyway. At least I tried!”

And the ghost threw a last burning glare at Setti before she flickered out.

Setti poked the polished disk with her finger. She’d put it in the sun two hours ago and still Jasmin hadn’t deigned to show her face. Setti should’ve known not even ghosts could stand her company for long. The old woman hobbled inside to fetch her shawl and when she emerged the ghost was suddenly there, floating right in the middle of her yard.

“Where are you going?” Jasmin’s voice was full of mistrust, still scrambled like an off-tune guitar.

Setti sniffed and drew the shawl tight around her shoulders. “Going to check on the boy.”

Jasmin narrowed her eyes, face full of suspicion. Something in her expression made Setti think she’d been crying, ghost tears that left her thick black mascara untouched. She was even more insubstantial than usual, like a candle about to burn down.

“What made you change your mind?” she asked.

Setti shrugged. “Still got a pear tree that needs cutting down.”

An annoyingly smug smile appeared on the ghost’s face, barely marred by the twitching. Setti groped for something bitter and seething to add, but nothing came to mind until she gave up and showed her irritation by walking right through Jasmin’s insubstantial body. The sensation was a lot less otherworldly than she had expected, didn’t feel like anything at all, not even a cold shiver down her spine. Nothing but air.

“Hey, old lady!” the ghost hollered after her. Setti rolled her eyes, but stopped reluctantly and turned around. Jasmin seemed more amused than angry, hands on her hips, but the next moment her demeanour shifted into something fierce and final.

“Please do me a favor. If the battery gives out, smash the fucking handheld to pieces. I’m done being imprisoned.”

Setti grimaced, an unexpected feeling of regret sneaking up on her, but she still nodded. “Course I will. But try to at least stick around until I return. I need someone to blame if I walk down to the village for nothing.”

Setti banged her cane against the door, scowling. She hated coming down to the village, the loose pebbles on the path twisting her steps, the pitying glances and hushed voices of the village folk, like she was a curious animal, exotic and out of place. Kite’s father wrenched the door open. He was a tall man, at least a head taller than Setti, broad-shouldered and staring down at her in confusion.

“Need some help?”

Setti glared at him. Did it look like she needed help when she could still bash against his door with her cane? “I need my apprentice,” she demanded, not too friendly. Her knee hurt.

The man’s eyes narrowed in suspicion and he shook his head. “No apprentice here.”

“Sure there is. That one.” Setti pointed her cane at Kite, who’d tiptoed into the room behind his father. His left cheek wasn’t the only spot growing bruises any more. “Bit the worse for wear, but I take what I can get.”

The father’s face warped from slight suspicion into open hostility in the blink of an eye, and he wasn’t the only one.

“What do you think you’re playing at, Setti?” Kite’s mother appeared right on her son’s heels, all haughty stares and proud tilt of the chin. Setti had known her when they were both younger, thirty-odd years ago, and even as a youngster that woman had had an attitude problem. Setti glared right back. She had more experience with it.

“Our boy is none of your business,” the husband growled. Most people took him for a calm, almost stoic person, at least until the first time they watched him lose his temper. He took a step towards Setti, relying on his sheer bulk for intimidation and then stopped in confusion when the old woman didn’t back off. Setti sniffed. Not much threat in violence when taking a step backward too fast hurt her worse than a punch to the face. What was he going to do, anyway? Hit her? That would score them points with the neighbors, hitting the village cripple.

“Ask him, then.” Setti shrugged into the tall man’s face. Or chest, more like. She didn’t think the boy would be of any help. Had an expression like he wasn’t even home, not hopeful, not afraid, like he’d just left his bruised face behind and nobody had noticed yet. But the boy surprised her again. Not the best thing in an apprentice, to constantly surprise you. Kite gave an almost imperceptible shrug.

“She’s telling the truth,” he said, calm as anything. “I already helped with the bees. I got stung.” And he tugged at his pants to show them the stings. Setti’s eyebrows rose and a small complacent smile threatened to tug at her lips.

Instead of acknowledging Kite’s words, though, his father’s eyes narrowed to slits, bouncing back and forth between the old woman and his son with menace. “He stays with us. Get out or I throw you out,” he said, moving even closer until she imagined she could smell the anger on his skin. So much for points with the neighbors. “I don’t know why you suddenly feel like meddling, but you have no say about my boy. He’s going to marry next year and it’s none of your business.”

Setti sniffed down her nose at him. “Plenty of time for marrying after an apprenticeship.”

Temper flared in the man’s eyes and for a second Setti thought he really would push her into the dirt. There was a way to ruin her afternoon, walking back to her house with a broken leg.

“Careful where you’re stepping,” she hissed at him. Setti never had known when to back off and by now she was probably too old to learn. She nodded at her cane. “Not too steady, these legs. I might stumble and break my neck. Think your neighbors will be happy with that? No more honey for your bread. No more willow bark tea if you hurt your back.” Had its uses, to have a village cripple in town, someone who was in pain so constantly she’d learned all about herbal remedies and painkilling teas. “No more feverfew if your headache returns. No more valerian tea if the nightmares get too bad.” All the little hurts that they thought nobody knew about until they started bartering for Setti’s herbs.

Kite’s father went pale, maybe fear, maybe anger, who could tell? The way she remembered, his back made him scream with pain every harvest season.

“What do you even want?” Kite’s mother glared at Setti as if glaring was all it took to make her leave. She was the one with the bad headaches.

“My apprentice,” Setti repeated.

Irritation hung in the air like syrup, thick and heavy, but neither of the boy’s parents dared to shut the door in her face. A lopsided smile snuck onto Setti’s face. She’d never tried to blackmail the villagers before and it was somewhat satisfying to know that it worked. It wasn’t so much the threat of keeping her medicine to herself, she assumed, but the fact that she knew all their flaws. Nobody wanted to end up in the bad books of somebody who knew their flaws. The old woman raised her eyebrow at Kite and for a moment he seemed about to vanish into the depths of the house to gather his things, then thought better of it. Setti didn’t take her eyes off his parents until the door was solidly closed between them and their son.

Kite looked almost stunned at his escape, a sleepwalker awoken in an unfamiliar place. Lost and confused. The ghost would love this.

“Thank you,” Kite mumbled.

Setti rolled her eyes. “Wait until you have to walk up the cliffs with me. You don’t know how slow a cripple can walk, and you’re going to stay right beside me.”

A shy smile twitched across the boy’s lips. At least he had some sense of humor.

Setti sighed. This wouldn’t be the last she heard of Kite’s parents. She started hobbling back in the direction of her house and the boy fell into step beside her. Foolish idea, to take him in. What had come over her? She knew it wouldn’t take long to regret her decision. Maybe it was the ghost’s nagging, or maybe she’d gotten used to having somebody to complain to. She glanced at the boy out of the corner of her eye as they walked, watched the idea of something akin to freedom slowly dawning on his face. She shook her head.

Ideals. Old people’s folly.