In a magical version of America’s Reconstruction era, Phaedra St. Market is white-knuckling her way through the cotillions and marriage proposals her parents see as the only path to a safe and prosperous future. Phee wants to control her own life, perhaps working with her father at his distillery, or even hiring on with one of the funeral directors in New Charleston.

Upon receiving word that her aunt Cleo has died, Phee insists that she will pomp for her beloved aunt, giving her the homegoing she deserves. Aunt Cleo left the family home in disgrace after Phee’s grandmother’s funeral, and Phee now deeply regrets not making more of an effort to spend time with Cleo while she was alive. In death, at least, she can extend the loving care and familial support that Aunt Cleo lacked in the final decade of her life. If Phee does the job well, maybe a local funeral home will take notice of her. Though Phee’s mother is hotly opposed to the idea—Phee has never planned a homegoing before! Cleo wronged the family and can never be forgiven!—Phee sets off alone for Horizon, the city Aunt Cleo founded and made her home.

Psychopomp and Circumstance wears its speculative elements so lightly that it’s only when I reached the book’s end that I fully understood how much of a fantasy novel it is. Magic is woven through every part of Phee’s world—the carriages are drawn across water by hippocampi, the food can carry spells, and unearthly creatures abound in Horizon. Royce has created a rich world that’s full of possibility for future books, if she so chooses, but those elements all exist in service of the emotional story Royce wants to tell.

When we first meet Phee, she’s been standing on the neutral ground of her own life for several years, neither progressing toward her desired independence nor acceding to her mother’s vision for her life (marriage; polite society; uplifting her people through prosperity). Her aunt’s death provides the catalyst for her to get off the sidelines and into the game. Her initial agreement to arrange Cleo’s funeral arises purely from a place of care for her aunt, and from the recognition that it’s the only thing she can do now in service of this relationship. This moment, Phee’s impulsive act of love, sets up the book’s two most prominent and, to my mind, loveliest themes: the discrepancy between intention and action, and the question of what we owe to each other, living and dead.

In all the years since Aunt Cleo was cast out from Phee’s family, Phee never went to Horizon to visit her, a decision she deeply regrets now that Cleo has died. As a reader, I felt really defensive of Phee for this. She was only a child, and then a very young adult, and she was and remains dependent on the approval of the same people who sent Cleo away in the first place. But Royce’s point is that my excuses, or anyone’s excuses, cease to matter in the face of death. Phee’s opportunity to have a relationship with Cleo is gone now, and forever, and no excuses, however justified, are going to change that. The intention matters less, and the fact of Phee’s inaction more.

It’s a theme that reverberates throughout the book. At Cleo’s funeral, Phee speaks to a family member who wronged Cleo in life, and wishes now that they had acted differently. But they were never willing, at the risk of losing face, to repair the breach while Cleo was alive, and they remain unwilling to take any action to atone for it now. Whatever they think about how they behaved, it’s ultimately their action—rather, the lack of action—that carries the most weight.

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Psychopomp & Circumstance

Eden Royce

Similarly, Phee has grown up with the weight of familial expectations on her shoulders. “This was her duty as a daughter of the Reconstruction. Find a suitable husband, have children, and raise them to carry on the family name and its legacy of enriching the city with wealth and knowledge.” As we learn, though, it’s really Cleo—the disgraced aunt, the thrown-away family member—who has done the work of caring for her people in the aftermath of Reconstruction. Her town of Horizon is a resting place and a waystation for both supernatural creatures and Black Americans in need of respite in the aftermath of slavery. Her legacy is care, and it’s that legacy that Phee enters into when she volunteers to manage Cleo’s homegoing.

As she spends more time in Horizon, Phee comes to realize that it’s only the appearance that matters to her mother. One of the most moving scenes in the book occurs when Phee spends the morning with a funeral director her mother called “odd” and refused to patronize. Yet Phee sees a man of exceptional kindness, a man who feels deeply the weight of his responsibility to the living and the dead alike. Though Royce isn’t heavy-handed, the gulf between Phee’s mother—who refused reconciliation with her sister even after death—and the man she scorns as “odd” feels particularly wide. Here again, thoughts and intention can only carry us so far. It’s our actions that show our true character.

Although they’re absent for most of the book, Phee’s parents are a presence deeply felt in their differences from Aunt Cleo; their choices make them strong foils for the life Cleo built for herself in Horizon. Where Phee was raised to care about appearance and reputation, Cleo showed tenderness to the vulnerable, strange, and outcast. Where Phee’s mother uses coercive control to get Phee to do what she wants, Cleo remained a steady, welcoming presence on the periphery of Phee’s life: steadfast in expressing her love for Phee, but never pushing Phee to go beyond what she was comfortable with. Royce ably navigates the contradictions of caring deeply about family while recognizing people’s flaws and pursuing a life that aligns first and foremost with your own core values.

Though I’ve barely mentioned Aunt Cleo’s house (so much to think about in this slim novella!), Psychopomp and Circumstance is, at its core, a haunted house story. As so often in such stories, Phee is haunted by lost possibilities that look like ghosts. After a lifetime of being told what adulthood will look like for her, Phee grasps at the chance to take on the responsibility of planning a funeral—an act for adults, an act that closes off childhood. But her true coming-of-age is her burgeoning understanding of what it means to be accountable to family, to community, and to the dead. This is a beautiful, spooky, and deeply heartfelt read. I can’t wait to see what Royce does next.

Psychopomp & Circumstance is available from Tordotcom Publishing. Read an excerpt.