Gravemound

by Kim Fielding

  “So why did you do it?”

  “I promised him I would. He did me a favor, and in exchange I said I’d keep the reaper away. He didn’t have anyone else to do it for him.”

  Kendo nodded somberly. “It’s a terrible thing for a soul to be unguarded.”

  “Well, his won’t. I’ll be here for two more nights.”

  They were both quiet after that, except for the sounds of Kendo chewing and swallowing. He worked his way steadily through the contents of the basket, making Phin wish he’d brought more. It looked as if Kendo hadn’t eaten well in a long time.

  Finally, he set aside the empty basket and drank from Phin’s water jar. He rubbed his stomach as if he’d eaten a feast. “Will you tell me where you came from and how you ended up here?”

  “It’s a longish story.”

  “We have hours before sunrise. And it’s been a long time since I conversed with anyone.”

  So after a little fumbling as to where to begin, Phin told about his life back home, about Somboon, and about their plans to take a vacation on the moon. It must have seemed like nonsense to Kendo, yet he listened closely and without obvious skepticism. Sometimes he asked questions, as if he truly wanted to know what a lawyer did or how Phin and Somboon had met. It was soothing to speak of these things and to share good memories with an attentive audience. And oddly, every mention of what he’d lost eased more of Phin’s grief.

  He found himself liking Kendo, who didn’t say much but never took his steady gaze from Phin’s face. Kendo revealed nothing about himself, and Phin didn’t pry. A person was entitled to keep his secrets, and it was clear that Kendo had endured considerable suffering.

  Phineas, his throat and muscles sore but his mind oddly at peace, looked up at the brightening sky. “I talked my way through the whole night. I’m sorry.”

  Kendo’s expression was serious. “Don’t be. Your company was even better sustenance than the food.”

  “I guess the reaper’s a no-show.” Phin slowly stood and stretched, feeling the sun’s strengthening rays begin to warm his bones. He was exhausted, but in the way of a person who’d accomplished a great deal.

  When he saw that Kendo was slower to stand, Phin held out a hand to help. But Kendo smiled a little, shook his head, and made his own way to his feet. They stood there, strangely awkward after a night together.

  “Would you like to come to my house?” Phin finally asked. “I have plenty of food there, and I could make up a bed for you. The villagers have been generous with blankets.”

  Kendo’s eyes were so sorrowful that it was painful to look at them. “No, thank you.”

  “But—”

  “It’s dangerous for me to get too comfortable.” Kendo executed a shallow but genuine bow. “But I thank you for your generosity.”

  “I’m glad you were here tonight.” Phin considered pressing the invitation but decided against it. Whether it was pride or something else, Kendo had his reasons for refusing. Maybe he’d simply had enough of Phin’s company.

  Kendo nodded once more and then, with surprising grace, climbed the low wall. He limped away in the direction of the forest. Phin gathered his belongings, gave the gravemounds a last glance, and began the trek back to his hut.

  Phineas fell into bed almost immediately after arriving home and slept deeply for most of the day, his dreams as insubstantial as morning mist over the fields. He woke up well rested and ravenous, almost believing he’d imagined Kendo. God, had he really spent an entire night talking some poor stranger’s ears off?

  If Kendo was real, where had he slept today? He hadn’t even been carrying a blanket. Dammit, Phin should have given him the one he’d brought to the cemetery. He could have spared it.

  In the day’s final hours of sunlight, Phin fixed himself a simple meal, ate, and tended to his kitchen garden. He still wasn’t sure what he was doing there—he’d need more tips from Osgod—but Phin thought he’d made a slight improvement. Or he’d at least kept the plants from erupting into a full-fledged jungle. He looked forward to eating something he’d grown himself. Before landing on this planet, he’d never done that and didn’t know anyone who had. Back home, food came from the big rooftop ag-domes and the protein factories. And although you could buy products containing a variety of spices and artificial flavorings, none of it tasted as good as the simple fare he ate here.

  With this in mind, he packed his snack basket extra full. Although the chance that Kendo would reappear was probably small, Phin could keep himself busy by stuffing his face all night. He also brought two blankets, just in case. The sky was without clouds, and tonight might be chillier than the previous one.

  Phineas greeted both Thozzon and Somboon when he arrived at the cemetery. They didn’t answer back, of course, but it seemed rude not to acknowledge them. He made his way to what he now thought of as his spot against the wall and settled down. “You know, they should install comfy seats in this place. Armchairs. Except maybe not too comfy, because we don’t want guardians nodding off in the middle of the night.”

  He wrapped one of the blankets around his shoulders and began to hum softly. He wasn’t very musical, but a few old tunes rattled around in his head and he didn’t mind giving them an outing. Nobody on this planet had heard them before, and he wondered what the villagers would think.

  Phineas was halfway through an advertising jingle for holidays on the moon—probably a little morbid under the circumstances—when a figure appeared out of the darkness. This time Phin startled only a little. He hadn’t heard Kendo approaching.

  “I have food,” Phin offered. He couldn’t see Kendo’s face, just the outline of his wiry body and the sword handle sticking up above one shoulder.

  “I don’t want to impose.”

  “It’s more than fair compensation for your company.”

  After a brief pause, Kendo sat close beside Phin and thanked him when Phin passed the basket.

  “I didn’t know if you’d show up tonight.”

  “I…. I rarely stay in one place for more than one night. But you’re very interesting.”

  Phin smiled. “Not really, but thanks. Hey, is it comfortable to sit with that sword thing hanging on you?”

  “My baldric?” Kendo sounded amused. “I’m accustomed to it. I sleep with it on. Does it bother you?”

  Phineas had to think about that. Where he came from, walking around with a sword would get you thrown in jail and subjected to weeks of violence-deprogramming classes. But where he came from, nobody worried about soul-reapers, and wars were fought with much more powerful weapons than blades. “No. But I have an extra blanket—I don’t know if you can use it without disarming yourself.”

  Kendo’s smile glinted in the moonlight. “I can.” He demonstrated by shaking out the blanket and folding it around himself in a complicated way that covered most of his torso but left his arms free. Then he dug into the basket. “This is a lot of food.”

  “I have plenty.”

  As Kendo ate, a nightbird called several times, a mournful sound from somewhere outside the cemetery. According to a story Gurthcir had told him, those particular birds had drab brown plumage and bumpy gray beaks. Ashamed of their own ugliness, they hid inside trees during the day, only coming out after dark to bemoan their fate. Phin stared at Kendo’s scarred face and wondered if that was why he traveled at night.

  “It doesn’t disgust you?”

  Phin blinked. “What?”

  “The way I look.” Kendo traced a finger across one of the deeper marks, a line that bisected his left cheek, narrowly missing the eye.

  “I have scars too, from the crash. You can’t see them now because of my clothes.”

  “You’re very handsome, though. I wasn’t, even before.”

  Now Phin blushed, the blood hot under his skin. He’d never considered himself especially good-looking. Even Somboon had tended to praise Phin’s mind—or, when they were in bed, his ass—but not his face. He cleared his throat. “My scars somet
imes pull a little if I move the wrong way. Do yours hurt?”

  “On a bad day, everything aches, but my face isn’t the worst of it. It does make people turn away, though.”

  Hoping to demonstrate how stupid those people were, Phin scooted a little closer and settled himself comfortably.

  After perhaps a half hour of silence, Phineas cleared his throat. “You’re a soldier?” When no answer came, he sighed. “Sorry. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. But I spilled my guts to you last night, and I spent hours today wondering about you.”

  “You thought of me.” Kendo sounded surprised. He looked down at his own lap. “I’m nobody now. I’ve been nobody for a long time. But yes, I was once a soldier. There was a war.”

  It was funny really—war was as small a word in this language as in Phineas’s own, yet it carried so much weight. So much importance. So much devastation. That tiny word ended so many lives and changed so many others.

  “We had a war too. I wasn’t there, but my family was. They died. The people who survived were never the same after.” Honestly, neither was Phineas, even though all he’d done was watch the vids. He’d seen his parents’ building collapse into a heap of melted metal, the heat so intense that not even the bones of the occupants were left. From thousands of miles away, that heat had scorched him too. For a long time afterward he tasted nothing but ashes.

  “Yes,” Kendo said, as if he knew all of this. “I left my home to fight, and I can’t go back. The man who used to live there no longer exists.”

  Phin nodded. He’d left his home too. “You said you’re nobody. But maybe you just haven’t decided yet who you’re going to be now.”

  “As you’ve done?” Kendo was watching him closely.

  “Maybe. I think the new Phineas is still a work in progress, but I’m hoping he’ll be an improvement in some ways over the old model.”

  “I think he’s very good.” Kendo smiled and then looked away.

  They didn’t talk as much that second night, but that was fine. When the hours felt too heavy, one might tell a tale from his past, but they were also perfectly comfortable sitting together in silence, so near that Phin could feel Kendo’s body heat. Kendo had likely experienced a great deal of solitude over the past decade, and Phin had gone through a good bit of it since the crash. So feeling time pass without talking was nothing new to either of them. Yet somehow Phin felt as if time passed more smoothly with Kendo there.

  The reaper didn’t appear. At dawn, both men stood and stretched. Kendo tried to give the blanket back, but Phineas refused to take it. “If you’re going to sleep outdoors, you can at least be warm.”

  Kendo folded the blanket over his arm. “You’re very kind.”

  “I’m selfish. I’m hoping you show up again tomorrow.”

  The lines in Kendo’s face seemed to deepen. “I can’t promise that. I’ve already stayed longer than my usual.”

  “I know. I only said I hoped—you have no obligation.”

  Kendo gave him a long look. Phin hoped it meant that Kendo was rethinking his vagabond ways. Or perhaps he was weighing the benefits and risks of obligation. It didn’t feel right to ask him, and then as Phin watched, Kendo climbed the cemetery wall and walked away.

  Gurthcir visited Phin’s hut the following afternoon, the first time she’d done so. Phin was in his garden when she arrived carrying something in a large sack. He brushed the debris from his hands and took the sack after she thrust it at him.

  “Don’t open it until your hands are clean. It’s two new sweaters and lace coverings for your windows.” She waved at the rough cloth he was currently using as curtains. “Lace is nicer in warm weather.”

  “Thank you, auntie. Can I get you some water and something to eat?”

  She grinned. “None of your ale yet?”

  “Not even close. It takes time to brew, and I’ve been—”

  “Staying up all night. No reaper?”

  “Not yet.”

  She shrugged. “You still have tonight.” After refusing another offer of refreshments, she sat on a low stool he’d carried outside. Phin sat on the ground across from her and toyed with grass stems while she filled him in on the latest gossip. It was interesting to live in a place where everyone knew everyone else’s business so intimately. In his old city, he hadn’t even known the names of the people who shared the same floor of his building.

  “You’re not afraid, all alone in the cemetery?” Gurthcir asked him eventually.

  He considered mentioning Kendo but decided against it. If Kendo didn’t want the villagers aware of his presence, it wasn’t Phin’s place to tell them. “You said the reaper can’t get me while I’m alive.”

  “It can’t. But maybe there are other things to fear. Ghosts.”

  “I haven’t noticed any.” He thought about this for a moment. “And even if there were, I can’t see why any of them would have a grudge against me.”

  “True. But be careful anyway.”

  “Of what?”

  She shrugged and stared thoughtfully at her hands. Her skin was wrinkled and age-spotted, her fingers gnarled, but there was still strength there. She still churned out beautiful things that kept her family and neighbors warm. “Sometimes I see.”

  Phin recognized the last word and knew what it meant, but there was something unusual in her tone, something that suggested she wasn’t talking about ordinary vision. “What do you mean, auntie?”

  “It’s considered a gift, the seeing. My mother had The Sight, and hers before her. It’s not a very big gift, or we’d have been wealthy long ago.” She cackled. “But it can be useful. I knew you were coming, for instance. Weeks before you arrived I saw a ball of flames fall from the heavens with two people inside—one dead, one hurt. Sorry, Sky-Demon. It didn’t give me the power to save your man. But it did make us ready to heal you when you arrived.”

  He pondered this for a moment. Back home, he hadn’t believed in precognition. But he also hadn’t believed in soul-reapers or burn ointments that worked instantly, and he knew for sure that at least one of those existed here. “Thank you,” he finally said.

  She gestured dismissively. “You’ve said that already. I’m not looking for gratitude. I came to tell you that this morning I saw something. Just a glimpse, mind you. Someone from the past, someone long gone, holding your arm in the cemetery. Maybe not a ghost, but I can’t be sure.”

  “Was this someone harming me?”

  She cocked her head and scrunched her mouth. “Nooo…. I don’t think so. But you were crying.”

  He’d sobbed plenty in the weeks after his arrival, grieving not just Somboon but everyone and everything he’d known. He wasn’t ashamed of his tears; they were part of his healing process. “Thank you for telling me, auntie. I’ll be careful.”

  With a small chorus of groans, she stood. “I’m glad you landed in our particular village, Sky-Demon.”

  He smiled. “Me too.”

  Phineas strolled slowly to the cemetery that evening. It was another clear night, the rising moon still nearly full, the air whispering promises of balmy weather to come. Last summer, one of the villagers had offered to take him deep into the forest and show him a particular tree that was so beautiful that some people believed the gods had planted it. Phin hadn’t been psychologically up to a journey then, but he might be this year. It was time for him to learn more about his new home.

  Maybe he should have been troubled by Gurthcir’s vision, but he wasn’t. If it was Kendo she’d seen, Phin couldn’t believe that Kendo would hurt him. After all, he’d had plenty of opportunity already, hours in the cemetery with his sword and knife, and with Phin unarmed. Besides, from the moment when Phin realized Kendo was a man and not a reaper, he hadn’t sensed any threat from him. Just… sadness, maybe, and a yearning for a little food and companionship.

  The cemetery hadn’t changed since the night before. Phineas placed some new stones on Somboon’s grave and then on Thozzon’s, but after t
hat he couldn’t settle down. Instead he strolled the grounds restlessly, careful to avoid tripping on the uneven ground. He was slightly worried that the reaper would show, but even more worried that Kendo wouldn’t. No promises, they’d agreed the night before, and that remained true. But Phineas felt his absence as an ache.

  Long after sunset, Phin continued to be the only living person in the cemetery, his basket of food absurdly overpacked.

  And then he heard something deep in the darkness. A furtive swish that wasn’t at all like Kendo’s now familiar boot-heeled limp. Could be an animal, he told himself. But he knew better. This sound carried a sense of intention that animals rarely possessed.

  Phineas took a few deep breaths and stood atop Thozzon’s gravemound, careful not to disturb the stones. He held the starstick in one hand even though the moon was bright. Something was coming closer, its humanoid shape forming from the shadows.

  “Hello.”

  Phineas leapt straight into the air when the voice came from behind him. When he landed, he turned to gesture urgently at Kendo. “Go away! It’s here.”

  Kendo didn’t go away, of course. He came closer instead, until he stood beside Thozzon’s gravemound.

  With a nervous glance at the reaper tiptoeing slowly toward them, Phin leaned over to give Kendo a light shove. “Really. Scram.”

  “I’m not afraid. My fear died in the war.” Kendo unsheathed his sword and held it aloft.

  “This is my responsibility, not yours.”

  “Keeping watch is a soldier’s business.” He flashed a smile. “Whatever happens tonight, good or bad, let us share that fate.”

  Did this have something to do with Gurthcir’s vision? Phineas couldn’t tell. But he did know that it felt good to have Kendo at his side. “All right.” And then, when the reaper moved closer, he raised his voice. “Go away!”

  It didn’t. It oozed closer, near enough for Phin to make out the details. When he did, he couldn’t help a gasp, because the reaper bore an eerie similarity to Kendo: gaunt, wild-haired, dressed in rags. Its face was unscarred, however, the skin stone-gray and the eyes glowing like hot coals. It snarled, showing broken teeth. “Begone!” Its voice was like unoiled pieces of metal scraping together. “That man’s soul belongs to me. Begone or I’ll wring your necks.” It held up clawlike hands.