Page 1 of Still the Sun

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 apopsound 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’snothingaround, 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.Wedon’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 alreadymarked 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, anddamnit 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 getstarted 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 singingproudly 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.

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