Free The Urn Carrier by Chris Convissor

sage.”
    After lunch, out of respect, Prince stays back as Tessa walks the
beach and looks at the painted creature. Prince said the one in Alton had
wings, but this one looks more like a dragon, with a tail flipped around almost
to its head.
    Its eyes are shiny and its mouth is open. It reminds Tessa of
Maori warriors in New Zealand. Prince is right. This is the perfect place.
    Tessa closes her eyes and gets real quiet. Murphy sits beside her.
She calls in her guides and all the people that have gone before her. She calls
in the four directions. Most of this she does silently, then she calls in the
elements. Sometimes she’ll find a feather on the way, or a rock, like a
heart-shape rock or quartz. Today she is just with Murphy and Prince, so she
uses Josh’s feather. She lights the sage and cleanses herself with it, and
Murphy. And the ashes. Then she walks into the water and blesses her Great Aunt
once more, and releases the ashes. Then she takes a picture of the ashes and
the water as she has every time. And sends it in a message to Mr. Forsythe.
    “I didn’t know iPhones were part of ceremony,” Prince calls out.
    Tessa grins and walks toward him. “Ahhh yes, the sacred iPhone
family ceremony.”
    “That’s pretty cool. I respect you for taking the time to care for
your Aunt that way.”
    “I’m doing it for Aunt Sadie and the family.”
    “Murphy seems to take it pretty seriously too.”
    “He does, doesn’t he?”
    Prince points to the purple bird foot birthmark on her left thigh.
“That’s a cool mark.”
    “Yeah, my twin has one just like it.” Tessa wishes she hadn’t said
that.
    “Well, why isn’t your twin here?”
    “He’s got a job. Couldn’t take time off.” Tessa hates lying so she
wills herself to believe it’s true, in a way.
    Prince doesn’t dwell on it. “Let’s scoot. We have a few miles to
cover yet.”

 
    Chapter 9
     
    WHEN JOSH FIRST found Tessa and Eli, he saw Eli crying and trying
to hold Tessa’s intestines in. Josh snapped his knife in the bloodied snow and
commenced to treat her like he would any animal on the farm; a cow with a
prolapsed uterus, a calf with fescue and half a hoof gone. He opened his kit
and, thankful that Tessa had passed out, proceeded to field stitch her.
    He ordered Eli to grab the travois in the back of the truck so Eli
could trek Tessa out. He did not want to chance the jumbling of the truck with
his fragile stitching. They bundled her tightly in a blanket wrap so as Eli
pulled the travois, she wouldn’t be jostled. And he directed Eli to the shorter
route, only five hundred feet to where an ambulance siren was already approaching.
    “Go! Now. Meet them over the hill. Straight to Traverse City. Tell
them she fell on her knife.” 
    He handed Eli his.
    “Now!” Eli, still in shock, nodded dumbly as he gazed at the other
figure in the snow.
    “I’ll take care of everything else. The less you know, the better.
Go!”
    Josh knelt next to Gabe and turned him over. Grimacing, he gently
lifted the part of the scalp that had been almost cut clean through. He wrapped
tight the head wound before heaving Gabe’s lifeless body over his shoulder.
    Josh carried him over the snow that would melt first in the next
day or two with the rains and forty degree temperatures. He walked right in
their footprints they had made coming up the hill. He belted the body in his
truck and trussed him up. He took a moving blanket from the bed of the truck
and wrapped Gabe in it. He put sunglasses and an oversized wool hat on him.
Gabe looked as if he was sleeping.
    Josh drove out, bucking and spinning the way he came in. He would
return to this spot at dawn and, with any luck, no one would be the wiser till
then.
    Josh kayaked with the lifeless form across the river. His strokes
were methodical and consistent. The body in front sat hunched over, unmoving.
Almost frozen.
    Josh’s cousins were waiting for them on the Canadian side. The fog
was barely lifting in the