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Snowflakes were whirling in the chill Marsh midmorning, glistening in the slanted rays of a timid and pale sun as two black, electric Mercedeses rolled to a silent shop on top of the hill. The chauffeur of the first one, a timid and gangly man in his late twenties, stepped outside to open doors to the back seat, admitting out two women and a man, all of them dressed in solemn black.

There was a crowd gathered outside the high wrought-iron cemetery gates. They were all men and women who were warmly dressed against the cold snap that had quipped the spring. When Rozanna Bennett and her entourage passed them, she caught a glimpse of flattened, broad faces with big noses beneath hoods, hats and scarves. They were the Trolls, part of the community that had grown up in Saint Gothard over the past few decades since the Revival. To social scientists, it was a fascinating insight into the formation of communities. To Rozanna, it was one more minority interest complicating her constituency.

"This way, minister, Mrs Larkers," Winston Llynara, her slender and obsequious assistant, escorted Rosanna and her daughter Ariel past the parked TV vans, waving off the most intimidating reporters and their microphones. Behind them, the two bodyguards from the escorting vehicle, fell in line.

As they passed through the cemetery gates, snow crunching beneath their feet. Turning left and then right on the narrow paths, they strode towards the cemetery manager's office. Despite the cold and the intimidating presence of the crowd around the gates, relatives had been in to pay their respects, and flowers lay amid the snow on several of the graves, small jars with candles burning in them on many as well.

Above them, there was a helicopter hoovering, its whizzing sound far from the racket of the petrol run choppers of the old days, still its sound annoying enough. National Security, they were, making sure the reporters were not sending any drones inside of the cemetery area. Rozanna was thankful for that, the hyenas had no scruples at all these days, no respect for deeply taxing and morose family matters.

"Mrs Bennett!" The woman who met them at the door wore a smart black suit, her bluish black hair tied back over a lined sunburned face with gold-rimmed spectacles over hazel eyes. "My name is Celebes Vincůrek, I'm the manager here. I am terribly sorry for your loss."
"Thank you." Rozanna never knew how to respond. What could she say? No words would ever bring her husband back. Or the father to Ariel and her brother Anthony, who was already waiting with his family, silent, a bit away. Even her normally so wild grandchildren were subdued, Rozanna noted, taken by the grave situation, standing still with hands in pockets and staring down at their shined shoes.

"I'm afraid the heating is broken in my office," Vincůrek said. "But the seats are more comfortable than in reception anyway." By that she turned and began leading the way across the large inner patio, past high olive plants and a mutedly trickling fountain. Anthony nodded silently to his mother and sister while then turning to follow, his wife Zarah staying behind with the three children, who all were as dark as her, none as blond as Anthony or his sister were. Llynara too lingered outside the door, sitting down on a hard bench and making phone calls; the business of government didn't stop for personal tragedy.

While the two bodyguards also hung back, waiting outside the room like big and looming giants, the four of them stepped into a silent and narrow room, and Vincůrek closed a heavy and dark-wooded door behind them, indicating three visitors chairs in front of her small desk. Sun fell in on the surfaces, bearing witness to a less prudent cleaning directive. Rozanna settled down into a padded chair of dark wood, while her children took the places on her both sides, Anthony silent and introvert, Ariel cradling a napkin and not bothering with her make up being ruined.

"You said we needed to talk," Rozanna said. "About Mario's funeral."
"Yes." Vincůrek's expression was sad, but her gaze didn't waver from the minister's. "There has been some complications."
"What kind of... complications?" Rozanna frowned.
"Let me first ask, your children were not Mario Bennett's biological children, that is right?"
"That's... well... correct," Rosanna confirmed. "The twin's real father was killed in action two months before they were born," she glanced over first at Ariel, who was blowing her nose for the umpteenth time, and then at Anthony who first now was letting his emotions through his thick defence, touching the corner of his right eye. "But Mario Bennett, my old childhood friend, was the only father they knew. We married ten months after the twins were born and well after the ash of Ethan Caspar had been properly buried," she paused to inhale with a strained feel over her neck, almost as if the oxygen level in the small room was too low.

Memories assaulted her. The death message of Ethan reaching her on that terrible, horrible day in June. His plane had been shut down over the Chinese Sea, no survivors possible. Then how Mario had been there with his gentle comfort. Her old teen hood boyfriend with his tender, large workman's hands, his soft words. She'd cried in his arms, as they'd sat down in the back seat of one of the old cars he'd been working on electrifying since the ban of petrol cars in 2030. He'd been there for her. And in that moment she'd wished that they'd never broken up. Then again, without Ethan there had never been the twins. While Mario and she had showed extremely compatible in bed, they had never been compatible in child making, and there had never been any chance for them to find out what was wrong as the political life had swallowed all of Rozanna's engagement for decades and decades. And then it had been too late...

"The children..." she eventually staggered. "I cannot see how that should have anything to do with this ceremony. How it could change it. Mario and I were legally wedded. He adopted the children, they got his family name."

"It's not about your marital status, your excellency, nor about the children's legal status," the manager said, her unpainted lips straining thin. "No, I'm afraid the genome tests following Mr Bennet's autopsy revealed a substantial proportion of Troll ancestry."
"Troll?" Rozanna frowned. "That's impossible. Both his parents were human, and born long before the first cloned revivals."
"I'm afraid it's not that simple." Vincůrek handed Rozanna a sheet of paper, showing the results from the test. "Nearly all of us have some DNA from Trolls, Elves, Nymphs and other archaic humans. Even Fairies and Satyrs in some cases. So while these tests are successful in keeping Trolls out of human cemeteries, they also very occasionally exclude others too."
"This is absurd!" Now, Anthony rose to his feet, a vein pulsing at his temple as he leaned forwards, knuckles at Celebes Vincůrek's dusty desk. "This is where my father's family has been buried, where he'd wanted to be buried."

As he spoke, Rozanna felt as if something black was opening up inside of her chest, a wholly new abyss of grief. The thought of not burying Mario in is family's tomb stirred up all her pain of the past few weeks, and she found herself choking on her words.
"Can you not change your rules?"
"I'm sorry," she said to the sound of Ariel's now more audible sobbing. "But the rules are clear and you all know it. If I had my way in this, I would open up the gates and let those protesters win. Everybody would be buried here, homo sapiens or troll. Or others. You know that the Trolls bring flowers to the graves? We won't even let them bury their families here, but they still make sure that the graves are tended."

"Surely you can make an exception," Rozanna felt desperate now, nothing but her denial sinking in. "I have money. I can make a donation to the cemetery. Or to you, if you prefer."
"Minister." Vincůrek lowered her voice as Ariel placed a gentle hand on Rozanna's arm. "You should be careful, that almost sounded like a bribe. And I'm afraid that the law is clear, a law you voted for yourself. The Prime Minister said, 'we do not force people to be buried in the same ground as pets, can we make them accept graves alongside anything other than our own species?'"

"Then there must be something wrong with the test," Anthony insisted. "My father was a human being!"
"Do you think he isn't?" Vincůrek pointed out through the window, past the bare tree, to where an aging Troll in a long, dark-green coat and unkempt beard was placing sunflowers on one of the graves. "His wife died recently too," Vincůrek went on. "That's not her grave, of course."

"But the test is for being a true human." Uncertainty and grief made Anthony wobbly on his feet and he leaned against the door, forehead pressed down in his hands, shoulders shaking as he finally let through a volcano of emotions. Still sitting, Rozanna and Ariel clasped hands, listening to the large man's sobbing permeating the room.
"The test is for Troll DNA," Vincůrek almost whispered. "What you're talking about is far harder to pin down." She quieted as she stood, showing that the visitation was over. "I'm sorry," she added silently.

A sense of conviction rose in Rozanna, one she hadn't felt since her first electoral campaign. She stood up straight, let go of her daughter and shook Vincůrek's dry and bony hand.
"Thank you for taking the time to talk," she said. "I'll contact the undertaker about Mario."

"The hyenas out there as going to love this," Anthony growled under his breath.
"We can try to... not make them find out," Ariel whispered as she began rummaging into her purse, then retrieving a neat make-up kit.
"They always find out," he snapped. "And you know that as well as I."

To that Ariel managed only a profound and sombre intake of breath, no doubt recalling her own quite dirty divorce a few years back, then she too stood and began following the others outside of the room, glancing at her face in the small magnifying mirror as she did so.

As Ariel disappeared through a door with a stylized standing woman upon, her brother made it over to his family where he began a low but heated conversation, leaving Rozanna to her own emotional devices. That included finally swallowing down the lump in her throat and striding out in the small patio again, to her strident steps her heels echoing sharply beneath the vaulted marble.

****

Llynara, seeing his supervisor spring into action, swiped his phone shut and scurried after her down the few concave marble steps.
"Is the funeral arranged?" he asked. "I have the invitations ready."

"No." Rozanna stopped by the cemetery gates, looking out at the sad, silent faces of the protesters outside. She felt like she might cry at any moment, like only the drive to act was holding her back right now. "Contact the media, Winston! We have other things to deal with."
"Rozanna, is there a problem?"
"You may say that, yes," her face pale, her lips pursed as she looked at the man who had served her well for so many years. Then she turned to her son, who was exiting after her, family in tow. "Anthony, can you give Ariel a ride home? I have things to sort out."
"Mother?" A frown of worry over Anthony's gray eyes.
"I'll talk with you later." Then she paused and reached out with her hand, gently touching his stubbled cheek. "Tonyboy."

The family endearment seemed to make him relax, easing up a bit even.
"Talk to you later, ma'," he replied, then he reached out and clasped the hand of his elegantly dressed wife, who looked if possible even more held together than him.

Oh, if they could just let it out, Rozanna wished. Then scolding herself, look who's talking. She wasn't the best example of giving in to her emotions. Now, that should be Ariel, who was coming out the door now, her make-up immaculate once again, and only some reddening to her eyes giving away that she'd been recently in flooding tears.

***

Rozanna joined the crowd, making eye contact with each quiet figure in turn, falling into the moment of shared sorrow. Tears ran down her cheeks, yet she felt a lightening of his burden, a sense of release.
"Call the Prime Minister, Winston," he said, turning to the shocked looking Llynara. "I don't think he'll want me in his government anymore."

As Rozanna strode further out into the snow, the Troll man by the tombstone lifted his gaze and looked directly at her. He didn't wave or make that strange little frown others used to tell her how sorry they were. But his large, brown eyes communicated his understanding of her hurt more completely than anybody saying 'I feel sorry for your loss' or some similar platitude.

Rozanna pulled out her own phone, found a picture of Mario and showed it to the Troll next to her.
"My husband," she said.

The Troll pulled a picture out of his pocket, a smiling Troll woman in a flower print dress.

They stood together in grief.