Still the Sun

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Something is missing.

I turn the brass ball joint over in my hand, tracing the subtly raised edge with my fingernail. It attaches to a hollow metal cylinder with ridging, suggesting the cylinder once housed a pump. A lip on the cylinder looks like it connected to something else. If that something else is a track, then this might be the first evidence I’ve found that the Ancients utilized skidding systems. The style of metalwork alone denotes the artifact is of Ancient make, but without more pieces, I can’t confirm my theory. My chest sinks at the thought that I likely never will.

Sighing, I set the damaged piece of machine on my little table. I didn’t see anything else nearby when I dug up this gem. I suppose I can venture out again and search a little harder, but doubts keep me here. I found this artifact a year ago, and it was a four-cycle journey to the dig site. That’s four cycles of food and water strapped to my back, and four cycles of camping on dust and dry earth. No way stations or people along the way. Just me. So I’m not exactly brimming with enthusiasm for a return trip.

Rolling my lips together and making a pop sound with my mouth, I push back from the table and stretch. I’ve been hunching over this thing for too long. I glance at the square clock on the far wall, one of two I constructed myself. The other hangs in the alehouse. The mist will settle in soon, but for my work, I prefer it. Keeps me from getting too warm. And if I wait for it to pass, I won’t finish in time.

Nothing ruins a funeral like an unfinished grave.

I stomp into my shoes, wrap my hands, and tie the front of my hair into a knot on the top of my head—it isn’t long enough for a proper tail—before stepping out of my single-room home. I built a little lean-to shed next to it, just large enough for a person to turn around in. From there I grab my tools—shovel, pick, rock bar—tie them up, and throw them over my shoulder before heading into town. The sun gleams brightly in my eyes, and I blink a few tears back as I cross the small village. A person could spit and reach the end of Emgarden, but it isn’t like there’s anything bigger around. There’s nothing around, except for the amaranthine wall to the east and the abandoned fortress to the northwest, a giant tower brimming with broken Ancient tech, I’m sure, but even Arthen hasn’t been able to get those doors open. We stopped trying years ago.

I skirt a random cluster of emilies in the road. The flowers are the fastest-growing things around and seem to be the only living thing that doesn’t need water. We don’t water them, anyway, but they thrive, sometimes in the strangest of places. One could pull up an entire patch of them at first sun and find them regrown a stone’s throw away by late sun. Granted, the only good reason for pulling up emilies is for the roots. The flowers, though beautiful, are inedible, but the long, tough roots make good ropes and cording.

The flowers are the only pretty thing in this lonesome desert. The Serpent cast everything else in shades of brown and rust, save for the farmland, which we tirelessly water to keep green. The emilies, though, they bloom in pastel pinks, blues, and violets, with centers that glow as soft as the last breath of an ember. Random splotches of color on a dry and dusty slab. Only the amaranthine wall can compare, but that thing definitely didn’t grow from the ground, and it’s certainly never moved. We don’t even know what it’s made of, so we just named the strange, translucent material after its color.

By the time I pass the alehouse and reach the cemetery, just off the road to the farms, the first whispers of mist tickle the air. I already marked Entisa’s grave with a few stakes. I brace myself as I look at them, breathing past the constriction in my throat. I hate crying, even with no one around to witness. Gritting my teeth, I focus on the technicalities. She’ll be placed in the row right beside Ramdinee, who died a year ago. While Entisa’s death was expected, Ramdinee’s was not. The woman had been young and healthy, a baker and builder, but illness plagues the best of us, and she died quickly. I’d been close to her—I’m close to everyone, even those who’d rather I dedicate my entire existence to digging and cast my little machines into the fire. Ramdinee’s grave had been a struggle to dig, like I’d been carving out the resting place for myself.

Ramdinee had believed in my machines, my theories. So had Entisa.

With Entisa gone, there are thirty-eight of us left. There have been no newcomers, no birth—

I lose my train of thought.

Shaking myself, I take the tip of my spade and trace the outline of the grave. It’ll be roughly a meter and a half long and deep, and only a few decimeters wide, since Entisa was a small woman. A kind woman, though quiet. Patient, albeit less so in her final years. Still, I think of her lifeless body, lying on her cot, and damnit I am not going to cry.

Working is a good way to mourn. Makes me focus on the burn in my arms and back. Gives me purpose. While I’d love to spend the whole sun hunting for artifacts and trying to get them working again, or tinkering around with new builds to help Emgarden, I’m a digger. I dig graves, I dig furrows for crops, I dig wells. Bodies aren’t going to bury themselves, and it’s not as though water can grow on trees or fall from the sky.

The fog settles, slow and comfortable, and I dig.

Don’t think about it.

I fall into the easy and familiar rhythm. After the first layer, my shoulders start to burn, but that fades after a few minutes. The key is to be careful with breaks; the more often I stop, the harder it is to get started again. So I dig, that rhythm unrelenting, even when I hit clay. Clay clears the mind. Clay gives me arms even Arthen can admire.

I’ve toyed with sketches for an earth windlass, something to help pull soil up the way the other windlass I built brings water up from the well. But we don’t have the supplies, and I’m the only one who would benefit from such a thing. Still, it comes to mind every time I pierce this shovel into the hardpan. Entisa had liked the idea, anyway.

By the time I’m halfway through, the fog has settled, like the weather is taking pity on me, crying on my behalf. The sunlight goes gray, mixing cool droplets with the perspiration beading on my temples and sliding down my spine. Here, I give myself a moment to drink and stretch. Here, I breathe in the mists and let them coat and cool my insides. Here, I listen to the hard thumps of my heart and ponder over Entisa’s never beating again.

My heart aches for Salki. Entisa had been the oldest person in Emgarden, and while her daughter, Salki, is hardly young, she’s my dearest friend, gracious and kind and hardworking. Knowing how much she loved her mother, and how much she will miss her, is my truest sorrow. And I hate that I can do little to help. But I can do this, and this is something.

So I keep digging.

The irony of my job is that I dig holes far deeper than I am tall. I’m strong, but I’m short, and so once I reach a meter down, since a stool would only get in my way, I start carving little footholds along the side of the grave. By the time I edge out the bottom, the packed dirt stands fifteen centimeters over my head. I climb out, tie my tools together, and wander to a clear spot not far from Amlynn’s home. Lying down, I tuck my hands under my head and stare up into the fog-choked sky, watching little dots of light play within the mist. Close my eyes.

The mourning will wake me.

I clamp my hand on Salki’s shoulder as four men prepare to lower her mother into the grave. Entisa looks peaceful, though the pallor and stillness of death warp her features, shaping her into a mere shade of who she was. She wears her favorite homespun dress. Her gray hair, which had always been pinned up, flows loosely around her shoulders. She wears a long necklace that I’ve never seen her without, a chain of tin with a poorly hammered pendant at the end of it. A stone ring speckled with pink flecks weighs down her middle finger.

The graveyard boasts the only section of Emgarden where our pitiful meter-high stone perimeter hasn’t broken, eroded, or otherwise failed, as though even time itself wanted to show respect for the dead. It cradles our few fallen as though in midembrace. The sun casts dark shadows over the nearby alehouse and other homes, setting a mood of solemnity. Not that we need the help.

Arthen, the town blacksmith, pulls a shroud over Entisa’s features, first on the left, then on the right, beginning the death wrap. The sun glints off his hairless scalp and catches in the uneven waves of his beard. Maglon, the alehouse owner, binds the shroud around Entisa’s feet, while two of our farmers, Balfid and Gethnen, prepare the ropes to lower her down.

Salki’s lip quivers when they finally lift the body toward my newly excavated grave. Otherwise, she’s a picture of serenity. She’ll cry later, in private. Like me, she hates making a public fuss, even when there’s good reason to.

The men handle the body delicately; it makes no sound when it touches the bottom of the grave. Arthen and Balfid take turns covering it with dirt, one shovelful at a time. I want to help them. I want to do more, but my fingers still tremble faintly from my earlier exertion, and it would be selfish of me to take this service from these people. Instead, I sing the hymn of goodbye a little louder, knowing that Salki’s throat is too choked to follow. Her mouth forms the words, and later I’ll have to assure her it was enough, but she’ll berate herself for not singing proudly in her mother’s memory. Salki has a soul of amaranthine and a heart of glass.

When it’s finished, I quietly hug Salki and step away so the other townsfolk can offer their condolences. Salki tearfully smiles at each person, absently thumbing a hammered metal brooch pinned to her shirt. One by one, the mourners make their way to the tavern, though a few return to their farm posts. It’s already mid sun, and the plants need tending.

I gather my tools and start back, then notice Casnia kneeling down the road, unaware of the funeral. She’s small, not any taller than myself, and round, thanks to Salki and Entisa’s care. Short black hair warms her crown, and clean clothes stretch over her back and thighs. She squats, her narrow wood tablet against the ground, her little satchel of colored chalks open and half-spilled beside it. Her tongue peeks out from the corner of her lips.

I approach, making sure she’ll hear my footsteps. “How are you, Cas?”

Though well into adulthood, Casnia has the mind of a child. She bobs her head to the right, then to the left, never taking her violet eyes off her art. She draws as a child would, often portraying the people of Emgarden. It always takes me a moment to sort out who she’s trying to depict; despite many motherly lessons from Salki, Casnia never uses the right colors, merely whatever she fancies in the moment.

“Is that ... Salki?”

She often draws Salki with red hair, or pink if there’s no red, though Salki’s hair is a pale gray with a few strands of blonde. Adjusting the tools on my shoulder, I ask Casnia, “Do you want to come to the alehouse with me to wait for her?”

Casnia continues drawing, seeming to not have heard me. She starts a new person beside Salki, sketching a lopsided head and rectangular body in brown. Yellow hair spikes out of the head. I know this one well—it’s me. The brown is right, at least. I have tan skin, brown eyes, and usually brown clothes. My short hair is brown, too, though Casnia has always insisted it is not. After a few more passes of the chalk, she scoops up her things and clasps them tightly to her chest with one arm, then offers the other to me. I grasp her hand and help her up, then walk at her slow pace toward the alehouse. If nothing else, I can give Salki a little more time to mourn before she has to tend to her charge. Casnia is not hers by blood, but she might as well be. Then again, Entisa wasn’t her mother by blood, either.

By the time I set my tools down and lead Casnia inside, Maglon has already resumed his post behind the modest counter, wiping glasses. Several people are inside drinking, discussing the funeral or taking their minds off it. Every death hits hard. Everyone knows everyone in Emgarden.

“You should be restin’, Pell,” Maglon says over the counter as I situate Casnia at my usual table, choosing a chair against the wall. Her balance isn’t always steady.

“Rested enough.” I tug absently at my breastband. The hot sun has made it especially uncomfortable. Serpent knows why I even bother wearing it; I don’t have much to bind. “How are you holding up?”

Maglon shrugs. “Well as anyone, I suppose. Got a feelin’ I’ll be low in the barrels this sun.”

The alehouse starts to vibrate; my hand finds a wall to steady myself. Maglon leans his weight on the counter, and Casnia pauses long enough for the quake to stop before continuing her work. Little tremors like this happen from time to time. Tampere, the name we’ve given this land, is often restless.

More people enter the alehouse, the ones I’d seen talking with Salki, though she’s not among them. Good. She should go home. Take a mist or two.

I get an ale and a cup of water, the latter for Casnia. She ignores my offering and sets down her things, unbuttoning her pouch and spilling the chalk. Two sips of my drink go down before I lean my head against the wall and rest my eyes. They burn a little when I do. Guess I should get some water for myself, too.

“... trowels aren’t working,” I hear when I open my eyes again. I wonder if I dozed off. The townsfolk fill the alehouse, leaving only a few chairs empty. Casnia has started a new picture, drawing me with yellow eyes.

Arthen rubs a hand over his bald head. “I can sharpen it again for you, but it’s all I can do.”

Frantess, another farmer, sighs. “The whole thing will snap in half if you do.”

“Don’t get on his case about it.” Gethnen finishes off a glass. “He can’t do nothing about it.”

“I know that,” Frantess snaps. “I’m just frustrated by it all.”

“We’re all frustrated,” Balfid adds from another table. Amlynn, the town doctor, nods her agreement.

“Pell’s got scrap metal,” Frantess says. “Just take it from her.”

“No thanks,” I say. By the way her face reddens, I don’t think she noticed me in the corner.

Skin flushed, Frantess leans into the argument. “And what good is the scrap to you? We need more tools!”

“What good is the windlass on the well?” I ask, picking at dirt beneath my nails. “Or the clock on the wall, or the flour mill you took from Ramdinee’s?” All of which I constructed by studying and repurposing Ancient artifacts.

Maglon glances over. “Are you the one with the flour mill?”

Frantess’s blush deepens. “I’m not the one who took it from her house! It’s just been passed around. And it’s not like Ramdinee’s using it anymore. My point still stands.”

“If you want artifacts”—I lower my hands and meet her eyes from across the room—“then go dig them up yourself.”

“I’m too busy digging up your dinner,” she snaps.

Maglon slams a cup down on the counter. “That’s enough of that.”

I force a deep breath into my lungs. Frantess has a point, but so do I. In truth, the idea of Frantess finding something new beneath the red-rock dust, melting it down without even letting me have a gander, makes me nauseous. I could do so much for this town if only I had more. More artifacts, more metal, more time. Unfortunately, not everyone shares my view.

In an attempt to keep the peace, I offer, “But if you need to melt down my rock bar, you can have it.” It’s the long steel lever I use for moving large stones when I dig. “I can use my shovel handle.”

“We don’t need it,” Balfid says.

“It’s not a bad idea,” Arthen remarks.

The old argument about the Ancients and the pieces of civilization they left behind goes beyond me and Frantess. It comes down to tools. Emgarden sprouted up in the middle of nowhere, for reasons no one can remember, and its resources are minimal. Everything is minimal. We can’t expand, we can’t trade, and we can’t mine. People need tools for mining, and we don’t have the metal for tools, even if I sacrificed every artifact I have, which at the moment totals two: the incomplete piece I was just studying and a drafting compass. Any minute now, someone will bring it up. Again.

Gethnen doesn’t disappoint. “We can try the mountains one more time.”

No one responds. They don’t need to. The mining of the mountains is a paradox; there are some ore deposits at their base, but we’ve no tools to access them.

“Keep the rock bar,” Balfid says.

“I’d rather lose it than my scraps.” I don’t take offense at the term they use for my piecemeal artifacts. That’s what they are, brass, steel, and other metal leftovers from an unknown history, and most in Emgarden see them as old toys from a time long passed. I’ve promised myself to forfeit all the scrap I have when our options run out, but the thought makes that gaping nothing in my core open wide and swallow.

Something is missing.

A familiar pang echoes in my chest. Rubbing my hand over my sternum, I take another sip of ale. Sleep and drink are the only things that keep that strange feeling at bay. The feeling that, like my broken artifacts, something about me, too, is incomplete. It’s a sentiment I’ve never shared with anyone, even Salki. How could I put into words something so deeply visceral?

“Keep your rock bar.” Frantess doesn’t sound defeated. It’s a promise of more arguments to come, perhaps without such an accommodating audience.

She wouldn’t take the rock bar anyway. It’s a necessary tool for digging the wells, and there’s no water without the wells. Lore—some might call it scripture—claims that Tampere exists as one land among many, created by the World Serpent, whose discarded skin coils into entire planets, far beyond what our mortal eyes can see. But when the Serpent shed the skin we call home, Tampere kept all its water deep inside, so we have to dig for it. Only the hardiest plants with the longest roots—like the emilies—can survive without intervention. No wells, no food. The crops are planted where the wells are, which gives our farmland a somewhat eccentric shape, but who’s around to judge us? There’s only Emgarden. I’ve walked clear to the amaranthine wall and the Brume Mountains multiple times. If any living thing has built another village, town, or city, it’s too far to reach. So it’s just us and that old fortified tower. That’s why no one ever bothered to repair, nor finish, the haphazard stone wall surrounding our little corner of Tampere. What do we have to keep out?

If I could get enough artifacts, figure out enough pieces, maybe I could find a way to collect water from the fog. By late mist, it leaves condensation on some things, especially glass and metal. But that just circles me back to the same problem as before: lack of metal. Lack of tools. Even Arthen couldn’t spare anything for my experiments. The crops are too important, even if they’re dug and harvested with brittle trowels.

I glance up at the clock above Maglon’s head, the complement to the one in my home. It’s a square box with two narrow platforms, the first marked with eight ticks, the second with five, to mark hours. There are small dots to mark minutes between them, but they’re hard to see from where the clock hangs. Wider bands on the platforms mark first, mid, and late, for sun and mist, respectively. It has to be wound, but I timed the bands and springs in a way to align with the hours so the metal ball bearing that marks the numbers would be accurate. Once the ball reaches the bottom of the clock, a small plug kicks it back up to the top. Right now, the ball rolls past the fifth hour, into late sun.

Maybe I should get some food. And then some rest. But I’m not fond of the idea of trading Maglon for grain when I have some in my own cupboards. Standing, I stretch my back.

As if sensing my thoughts from the next table, Amlynn offers, “I’ll watch her, if you’d like. Get her to Salki by first mist.”

I glance to Casnia, who’s finished her drawing and occupies herself by freeing a sliver of wood from the wall. “Thank you.”

As I make my way through the crowd toward the exit, Arthen snags my wrist. “Where’s my knife, Pelnophe?”

I roll my eyes and pull free. “For the last time, Art, I never borrowed it.” I flick the side of his head and continue on my way. Next time that man asks me that same blasted question, I’m going to dump water on his forge.

Outside, I haul up my tools, feeling the soreness waking in my back, and head down the main road to my house. Mourners have crushed some of the emilies I passed earlier. I can’t tell if their centers still glow; the sun shines too brightly. Skirting them, I continue on my way. Everyone but Salki has crowded into the alehouse, so the streets stretch quiet and empty. I’m nearly home when I hear a soft, distant tone winging through the air. One I might not have heard, were it not for the funeral pulling everyone from their homes.

I’m no musician. I couldn’t pick the note from a scale or re-create it myself. But I hear it on the slightest stir of a breeze, as though it calls from the mountains themselves. A single high tone, softer than a newborn’s breath. Then it’s gone.

Biting my lower lip, I pick up my pace, stow my precious tools in their shed, and slip inside my little house. Kick off my shoes, soak some grain. Devour it when it’s only half-softened, then drop into my bed before the ball on my clock can drop to the next platform.

I start at the knocking on my door. Stare at my ceiling a long moment while my mind shifts from dream to reality. I can’t remember what I dreamed. A hand, a tree ... but even as I try to recall it, it slips away, as intangible as the mists.

Mists.By the dimness of the room, I can tell it’s high mist. I sit up, listening, wondering whether my tools fell over and clattered against the side of the house—

Knock knock knock knock knock.Firm, but not desperate.

Stifling a yawn, I slip out of bed, stretch my back, and rub my eyes. “I’m coming,” I mutter, finger-combing my hair.

The knocking begins again. I wrench open the door, ready with a sharp word if it’s Arthen, or a soft one if Salki has sought me out.

But as I stare up into the green eyes of an utter stranger, my breath catches.

One coherent thought worms through my mind: He is not one of us.