Now, the Occultist had lied to the Artist.
Not about the loss of his beloved sister, nor about his need for a crafted object in her likeness, preferably as faithful and beautiful as such a fine craftsperson as Angie Yonaga could manage.
He had, however, lied about exactly what the purpose of the likeness would be.
You see, he did not intend to hold a funeral for his sister at all.
Instead, he had her mummified in the dry, dusty cellar of his hut, a tomblike place of gnarled and withered roots and black corners lit only by the single candle he brought in with him the night after his visit to the Artist, as he had been doing every night since her passing.
It was a place where the air crushed and suffocated, as the Occultist wished for the things inside it to remain eternal: as untouched by condition and change as possible, whether in the form of a kiss of heat from any more powerful or natural light or a simple shift in the air around it.
The most important of the sacred things he kept in this cellar to preserve, of course, were not any of the twisted ritualistic statues or paintings of long-forgotten gods, or death-masks hung on spikes from the walls with their stony visages, or the vials of mysterious liqueurs used to prepare the minds of vessels to be entered by spirits in dark-of-night seances which he had promised to himself he would never open.
It was, of course, his sister, who lay on a stone slab, her body wrapped in fragrant dried silks and draped in her favorite violet kimono. Her hair, long and serpent-tongue black like his, fanned across the stone around her in a halo; her arms were just-out at her sides, palms up and fingers curled by stiffening in death, and as the Occultist approached her, he thought that it looked almost as if she was holding them out deliberately, in greeting.
The Occultist's sister had been very beautiful in life. It would not have done, or so he had thought, to arrange her body in any way without a sense of balance, grace, and artistry.
He had, however, also accounted for many practicalities.
In addition to the mummification, the Occultist had spared no attention and none of his ritual knowledge in marking the edges of the stone, all the way round, with sigils and spellwords. The carved heads of protecting beasts sat roaring back-to-back where corners met; prayers in a hundred forgotten tongues wished his sister's spirit rest, and in a hundred more, wished for her body to remain uncorrupted by any touch of age or rot or insect.
Webs of wells filled with salt lacing through the images and words, meanwhile, were for the purpose of binding, so that her spirit may never be lost.
After he inspected these last, in particular, with his candle brought close and his head leaned low by his sister's side, to ensure that the salt had not somehow emptied or found itself disturbed, the Occultist crossed to the back of the cellar - where the air was deadest - and then knelt before a cabinet. He opened it to an array of heavy clay pots. He selected one, returned to his sister, and began anointing the body with the thin and oily liquid inside, watching to ensure that no drop was wasted as he scattered it from the downturned tips of his fingers. Dots darkened her dress near-black where they fell in the lightlessness of the cellar, and then dried to pure violet again.
He returned to the cabinet and then replaced the jar with another. He repeated the process, and then replaced that jar with another, smearing the paste into the many grooves he'd carved along the sides of the slab. From another jar, he ate a small dried fruit which tasted of dust and wine, and then recited a long and somber incantation in sounds that he had needed years to train his mouth to make with precision, his hand over his heart and his head bowed.
Once the incantation was complete, he knelt beside the slab. He gingerly took his sister's hand, in its slippery silk bindings; pulled his mask down from his face; and kissed it.
Then he stood, sadly regarding the swath of white bandages wrapped around what he knew should be his sister's lovely face.
"I hope that you are resting well, dear Sister," he said to the body with a solemn smile, his voice a rattling whisper. "I know the loneliness must be unbearable, but at last, I can promise with certainty that you won't have to endure it much longer."
He thought of the wax doll, and into his smile crept a note of joy.
"In days," he said, "I'll finally have all I need to bring you back to the world of the living; back to our home; back to me."
With a kiss pressed to the body's wrapped face, he ascended the ladder from the cellar to the lantern-lighting of his hut. When he slept that night, he dreamed of the doll, and saw it not faceless, but smiling at him.
Sure enough, when he returned to the Artist's hut the following afternoon, he was met with the doll sitting on the table where the Artist had begun sculpting it in front of him, now bearing the outlines of two sharp eyes, and the curve of a bowlike smile.