by Kim Fielding
Gravemound
Kim Fielding
Copyright © 2021 by Kim Fielding
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Phineas crouched as he heated the salvaged electrical cord with utmost caution, holding it the perfect height above the fire, keeping his hand steady, being patient. Just a moment more and the metal interior would soften the right amount, and then—
“Shit!”
The sap-filled firewood had popped, sending up a shower of sparks and burning his hand. He reflexively dropped the cord, which landed on glowing coals. He pulled it out immediately, ignoring the additional damage to his skin, but it was too late. The insulation was charred beyond rescue and the delicate metal had warped and blobbed. With a strangled cry of frustration, he heaved the cord away. It landed on the dirt floor with a thud and slight sizzle.
With a sigh so deep it hurt, Phineas rose to his feet and crossed the small room to a wobbly little table. He poured some water from the clay pitcher onto one of the rough cloths he used as a towel and wrapped the damp fabric around his burned hand. Then he walked wearily to his cot and plopped down with a groan. “Stop wasting your time,” he scolded himself. “You’re never getting off this hunk of rock.”
He’d lost track of time and had no idea what season it was back home, far across the galaxy, countless light-years away. So he closed his eyes and pretended it was autumn, that perfect time of year when the air carried strong hints of cold days to come and the two suns slanted their mellow golden rays, warming even glass and steel. In past autumns, he and Somboon had arisen early on their days off and enjoyed brunch at a little café near the apartment. Then they hopped into an airpod for their reservation at one of the virtual nature reserves, where they hiked through holograms of forests, the leaves gloriously colored and the appropriate scents and sounds piped in. Then Phin and Somboon had zoomed home, showered, zapped something tasty for dinner, and cuddled in front of a vid. Sometimes they hadn’t bothered to convert the couch into a bed before making love and falling asleep.
“Way to torture yourself,” Phin growled. At least he’d intended it as a growl; it came out more like a plea. He knew he shouldn’t dwell on the past, but it was painful to see the last grains of hope slip through his fingers. His burned, dirty fingers.
He allowed himself to wallow for a few minutes before standing and shuffling to the shelves where he stored his worldly goods. Back when he’d been learning how to light his hearth fire and cook over it, Scapaurr the herbalist had given him a little pot of burn salve. It was gooey stuff that smelled like mud, but it worked amazingly well. Almost like magic. After he rinsed his hand with the pitcher, he gingerly smoothed on some of the gunk. The sting of the burns faded almost at once and the angry red marks disappeared.
Phin looked at the charred, mangled cord with bits of its violently purple insulation still intact—a shade and texture rarely found in nature. It clearly didn’t belong in this place. Didn’t belong on this planet. Just like him.
“Well, I’m not quite ready to give up on myself yet.” Phin picked up the cord and walked through the open doorway into the front yard. Lots of green things were poking up through the dirt, possibly all weeds. But some of them might be survivors from his hut’s last resident, holdovers from a kitchen garden perhaps. He should ask someone. Maybe some of the seedlings would turn out to be flowers, which would be nice. He had vague memories of flowers last summer.
He and Somboon used to fantasize about being wealthy enough to afford an apartment with some outdoor space—maybe a little balcony where they could grow a few things in pots and sit with their morning tea. Now Phin had so much outdoor space that he couldn’t see his nearest neighbors. “Yay,” he mumbled.
He tossed the cord onto the goodly pile of other failures. Tomorrow he’d carry them out to the crash site where they could rejoin the remains of his ship. That seemed more appropriate than littering the countryside with bits of alien plastic and metal.
It was time to decide how he was going to support himself for the rest of his life.
Back home—and dammit, he needed to stop thinking of that place as home—he’d been a lawyer. That earned him enough to pay his half of the bills, and he was also good at playing vid games, making coffee, and doing 3-D crossword puzzles. None of those skills were the slightest bit useful in this place, where electricity, writing, and lawsuits hadn’t been invented, and where coffee didn’t exist.
The nearby village had a few craftspeople—a potter, a blacksmith, and several knitters—but the majority of the locals farmed. Phin didn’t know how to do any of those things. The people here had been incredibly generous, welcoming him as a complete stranger, providing a place to live and enough food and supplies to get by. But most of them were poor, and he didn’t want to burden them any longer. He would, however, have to ask them for some guidance at least.
The villagers had settled him in a little stone hut, past their fields and near the edge of the forest. He didn’t know whether they’d decided that was the best available house among the several empty ones in the area or if they’d intentionally isolated him, for his comfort or theirs. When he’d first moved in, he hadn’t known enough of their language to ask. Besides, he’d been too grateful to question their motives.
It was obvious that nobody had lived there for years, but it wasn’t a bad place at all by local standards. A nearby stream provided fresh water. The sturdy structure had thick walls that provided good insulation, a floor of well-packed earth, and a few pieces of serviceable furniture. Sure, it was a small house, but Phin was used to that. The apartment he’d shared with Somboon hadn’t been much larger.
It was, however, a bit of a walk into the village proper. Phin went every morning unless the weather was terrible, mostly so he could sit with the elders on several stone benches in the village center and practice the local tongue. This particular language hadn’t been programmed into the linguistics chip in his brain, so he’d needed time to understand and speak. They used to tease him about his accent and the way he mangled their words and grammar, but they’d been good-natured about it. The friendly joking had given him a good incentive to learn, and now he stumbled only rarely.
He’d already made this journey once today, but he set out again, strolling down the dirt track over gently rolling hillocks, watching the freshly sprouted plants in the fields as they reached for the sun. Only one sun. That had also taken some getting used to.
A few farmers waved as Phin passed, and he waved back. He’d helped them a little during harvest and planting seasons, but clumsily. Even the youngest kids were more useful than he’d been. He certainly wasn’t an able enough farmhand to make a living off it.
After about half an hour, he reached the village—four or five dozen huts much like his own, scattered haphazardly around a central square with a well. That was where the elders spent their days, gossiping and knitting as they looked after children too young to work in the fields. The village held celebrations there too—raucous affairs with loud music and lots of the traditional drink, which was made from fermented milk. Phin hadn’t yet figured out the details of the holidays here, but he was always invited to join in, which was nice.
Now he sat among the aged knitters, next to Gurthcir, a stick-thin old woman with a boisterous sense of humor. She was also a wonderful source of information.
“What’d you do to your paw, then, Sky-Demon?”
They’d called him that when he first landed, and by the time he understood what it meant, they were no longer serious about it. I
t was just a nickname. He could see why they’d used it sincerely at first, though, considering he came crashing down out of the heavens in what must have seemed to them a contraption straight out of nightmares. None of them had ever seen a starship before.
“I burned it.” There were no longer any signs of the injury, and Phineas wondered how Gurthcir knew. Maybe she smelled the ointment.
“You were trying your magic again, eh?” She poked him gently with her knitting needle. “No use in that. Your magic won’t work here.”
“Yes. I’ve finally figured that out.”
“Ah, good. So even a sky-demon can learn.” She cackled, sounding remarkably like the birds that locals raised for eggs and pretty feathers.
“Auntie, maybe you can help me.” Phineas didn’t yet fully grasp the complicated system of family relationships, but Gurthcir had recently told him he could call her auntie. He hoped that was a good sign.
“What do you need, my boy? My daughter baked extra bread this morning, if you’re hungry.”
Phin smiled widely. He still couldn’t believe how generous these people were to a complete outsider, especially when they had so little to begin with. “Thank you, auntie, but I’ve eaten. I need help with something….” He struggled for a moment to find the right term and settled on “Something bigger.”
A sly look entered her eyes. “Ah, you’re lonely. You need my help finding you a spouse.”
He blushed, and at the same time a familiar pang twisted his heart. He was lonely. Somboon, who hadn’t survived the crash landing, lay beneath an earthen mound in the village cemetery. But Phin didn’t want a matchmaker.
“Not that, auntie. I need a….” There was no word for job here, at least as far as he could tell. “I need to work for money.”
“We won’t let you starve, you know. Sharing is a blessing. Most of us think so, anyway.” She cast a glare in one particular direction, then turned back to him. “But you want to feel useful. I understand that.”
Phin nodded. “I tried to help with the farming, but I was mostly just in the way. And the things I’m skilled at aren’t any good here.”
She looked thoughtful. “You tell good stories. Ones we’ve never heard before. Everyone likes that.”
He wasn’t really all that great at it—he couldn’t do interesting voices and he tended to wander off on tangents. But the people here did enjoy listening to him talk about life on his own planet, even if they probably didn’t believe a word. Eventually, though, he was going to run out of things to talk about, or else the novelty would wear off and everyone would simply get bored. “I think I need more than that, auntie.”
Gurthcir gave a slow nod and knitted a few rows, her needles moving so quickly that his eyes couldn’t track them. He couldn’t tell what she was making, but he liked its mellow earth tones. She’d told him once that all the yarn used here came from a village far away, where the residents specialized in raising animals for fiber and for spinning and dyeing the results. It took nearly a week to get there—a distance Phin’s starship could have covered in minutes. Too bad Phin had no clue how to create yarn, or else he could save his neighbors a long trip.
“Sky-Demon, I want you to tell us a story right now.” Like the other elders, Gurthcir was still knitting, but her intense gaze focused on Phineas rather than her needles.
“Um, I—”
“Tell a story from when you were a very young man. Tell us how you met your spouse.”
That was a specific and strange request, but Phin owed her at least this much. “Um, okay.” He frowned as he organized his thoughts. But his grief had clearly progressed; the memory was more sweet than sad. “This was when I was in….” He paused because there was no local word for university, or for schools in general. “I was in a place where people spend a few years learning things.”
“Like what?”
He snorted. “Nothing that’s come in handy here. Anyway, it’s an intense experience for most people. Stressful. I took up a….” No word for hobby either. “An activity to calm me down. I learned to brew a drink.”
“Fermented milk?” Gurthcir looked interested in that, and so did everyone else within earshot. The stuff was very popular, although everyone complained about the taste.
“No, we don’t have much of that where I’m from. This is called ale.” He used the term in his native language. “It’s made from grains.”
“You can drink arrowgrass?” asked a plump old man, looking astonished.
“We don’t have that where I’m from either, so we use other grains, but I bet arrowgrass would work. You ferment it, add some stuff to it, and there you go. It’s not as strong as your milk, but it’s nice to drink.”
A hum of astonishment rose among his listeners, who’d even stopped knitting, but Gurthcir hushed them. “Tell us more.”
“Well, my friends made fun of me for it. They said it was a waste of time.” Why bother with alcohol when pharms could instantly give you whatever kind of buzz you wanted? “But I did it anyway. It was fun. Creative. Relaxing. And one day when I went to buy some supplies, I met a really cute man who was there for the same reason. We started talking and we just clicked.” He snapped his fingers to demonstrate.
His audience members nodded as if they understood the phenomenon well. Gurthcir poked him gently with a needle. “Could you make this ale here?”
Phin considered. “Maybe. I’d have to make some adjustments for local ingredients, but it might work. I’d need tools, though.”
“What kind?”
“Um, pots. Buckets with lids. Spigots. Bottles and bottle caps. A few other things.”
“The same things that are used for milk, sounds like.”
He shrugged. “Probably.”
“And if you had these things, you could make enough for the whole village? Because we’d all want to try some.”
Everyone nodded in eager agreement.
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Then there’s the solution to your problem, Sky-Demon. There’s how you can be useful.”
Phineas Coleman, brewmaster from the stars. That had a nice ring to it. For the first time since he’d landed here, he felt a tiny spark of optimism. Which quickly went out. “I have no way to pay for any of that stuff, though.”
Gurthcir waved a wrinkled hand. “Only one person in the village ferments milk, and he owns all the equipment you need. But you’re going to have to persuade him to give you some, and that won’t be easy.” By way of explanation, she pointed toward a large house that hunched beyond the others, as if too proud to exist among the common people. The house was a veritable castle in comparison to Phin’s little place, and it was home to the one local who hated Phineas’s guts.
“Thozzon won’t give me anything.” And, sadly, small business loans didn’t exist here.
“You won’t know unless you try.”
“He won’t even talk to me. He just glares. He doesn’t want anything to do with me.”
To his surprise, everyone laughed. Gurthcir patted his leg. “It’s not to do with you, Sky-Demon. He’s a miserable sod. Treats everyone like shit under his boots.”
It made Phineas feel slightly better to know that the antipathy wasn’t personal. But it didn’t get him any closer to setting up a brewery. “So why even bother?”
“Why bother to make ale, eh? Isn’t that what your friends said? But look where it got you. You met your love that way.” She gave him another needle poke, this one hard enough to make him rub his arm. “Sometimes the value of something isn’t clear at first. Doesn’t mean it’s not worth anything.”
True enough, he supposed. And Thozzon wouldn’t murder him simply for asking. Probably. Phin stood and gave her a smile. “Thanks for the advice, auntie.”
He squared his shoulders. No time like the present, Phineas. It was time to swallow his pride and do some groveling.
Thozzon’s house was made out of stone, just like Phineas’s, just like everyone else’s. But somehow Thozzon’s
stone seemed more solid. Threatening, almost, as if it might collapse on intruders. Most of the huts, including Phin’s, were an irregular assembly of curves and humps, without a right angle or level surface to be found. They looked almost like living things, strange stone mushrooms risen out of the ground. Thozzon’s, however, seemed more deliberately constructed, a brooding alien presence.
Phineas hesitated near the door, gathering his courage as he gazed out at Thozzon’s newly planted fields. Thozzon was wealthy by village standards. He lived in the biggest house, controlled the milk fermentation, and owned some of the nicest farmland. He showed up at the village celebrations dressed in fancy robes that weren’t locally produced, and he’d stand at the edge of the square frowning and avoiding everyone else. Unlike the rest of the villagers, he showed no inclination to share what he had, and his reactions to the sky-demon had bordered on hostile.
But worrying wasn’t doing Phin any good. After a few cleansing breaths, he straightened his shoulders and knocked on the heavy wooden door.
Nothing happened. Phin was debating whether to go away or knock again when the door creaked open. And there was Thozzon, dressed in his ornate clothes, the corners of his mouth drawn down into their usual disgruntled creases. However, his pale hair, usually carefully plaited, was a knotted mess, and his pale eyes were red-rimmed. That was new.
He said nothing—just stood in the doorway and stared.
“Um, hello.” Phineas fought the urge to fidget. “I wonder if I could talk to you about something.”
“I’m busy.”
Phin suppressed a sigh. “Of course. Sorry. I’ll, uh, come back later.” He turned to walk back to the village.
He’d gone only a few paces when Thozzon called out. “Sky-Demon!”
Phin stopped and turned to face him. He was pretty sure Thozzon was more earnest than Gurthcir in using the demon reference, but it had stopped bothering him.
“What do you want?” Thozzon demanded.