Pushing away from the desk, he shuffled over to the mirror on the far wall and took a final look at himself. It was as he feared; though, his hair was much longer than he’d realized…a far cry from the short cut he preferred in his younger days.
Alongside the mirror sat his collection of water bottles now nearly empty. From his last trip into the back room, he knew that he wouldn’t find any more there. His filters went a few months ago…one of the few things he hadn’t calculated correctly.
The containment suit felt heavy today, that old easy weight pushing his frame a little lower. For a passing moment, Dave wondered if it wasn’t the suit or his muscles at all, but perhaps the planet’s gravity going on the fritz. Looking at his skinny arms and legs, it was a nice dream to clutch to. A heavy twist to the right and the airtight seal released, greeting him with a hiss. The outside world flooded into the first room, bathing it in radiation.
“There was never enough for both of us.”
The metal groaned as he pushed the door back into place. Another day in Hell, he only hoped that he could find some bit of supplies that he’d previously missed.
But hope was something he’d never been good at.
I still remember the eve I came to the city of Tessera.
I remember meeting the withered old tile maker who lived in the house nearest the sea. I remember all the things he said to me, all the things he did.
I remember what it came to in the end.
I was only twenty and two in those strange, surreal days. Before the storms came, the world still had its wonder for me. I had believed in all the foolish things young men put their faith in. I had loved a girl and lost her. I had learned to ride, to fish, to sail, and to fight. I was a lad with a future. Life might have been good, if not for the way it happened.
Had the storm not waylaid my own city and slain so many of those I loved, I would never have come to Tessera. But as it happened, it did. A week after my family drowned, I set out alone. With a bag of bread and a heart heavy as stone, I rode east along the old cliffs until my pitiful steed and I shambled onto a cobbled road. It was raining that night. I was sodden with self-pity, soaked to my skinny bones with rain, but I was not quite ready to die. I saw a city, its lanterns gleaming in the black. Home, I hoped right away. I should have kept riding.
The old man took me in that very night. His name was Hasai. He was some five and eighty along, as skinny as a stick, as knobby and crabbed as an old piece of driftwood. His house atop the cliff was nearest the sea and first along the road to Tessera. I saw the warm lights in his windows and the rain rolling off his eaves, and I went to his door. I must have looked like a fish, all wet in my father’s cloak, my eyes wide and my skin clammy as a cod. I thought he would shove me off his porch and into the angry waters off the cliff’s edge, but no. He looked me over and locked his fingers around my wrist. “Come in, you sodden soul,” he said to me. “I’ve some soup on the fire. This rain’ll be the death of you, same as your village. You are from Veni, aren’t you?”
He was right. I was from Veni. Though of course, Veni was no more. The storms had boiled over the cliffs and drowned everyone I’d ever known. My family floated atop a lake with hundreds of others, all of them pale and dead and gazing with black eyes to the sunless heavens. My house was but timbers floating in what once had been my father’s field.
“Yes,” was all I murmured to Hasai. “Veni.”
When I think back upon what lay within the old creature’s walls, I cannot stifle a shudder. I walked in from the rain, tired and hungry and cold and wet, but my eyes soon widened. Beyond the dry, thousand-cracked front door, I encountered such wonders as I had never seen. The walls were painted with glorious frescos, the rooms stuffed with sculptures of nude maidens and feathered angels, and the floors lined with carpets so soft a man’s feet might fall in love. It made no sense to me. How could such things exist inside a cabin atop a cliff? Lithe caryatids kept up the ceiling in his dining room, while the doors to each room were pale and pristine, their surfaces so white I dared not lay my dirty fingers upon them. I had never seen such a collection. I felt I had walked into one of the great cities my father had always rumored about. But this is just an old man’s hovel by the sea, I remember telling myself. The sign outside his door says ‘Tile Maker’. He should be poor. These walls should be bare. The house should look on the inside the same as it does from without.
I slept my first night away in a king’s bed, my belly full of soup. Hasai awoke me in the morning. When he rolled back the curtains, the sunlight poured into my room like water into a ship’s broken hull, and a room full of red frescoes and pale sculptures greeted me. “Your chambers, if you’ll have them.” Hasai smiled at me. “I’ve only two rules.”
I was such a young, dumb thing. So desperate for a roof over my head and so enchanted by the glorious sights within in the old man’s house, I never questioned his offer. “Rules?” I asked him. “Name them. Anything. I need a place to stay. My family is…”
“…dead and gone.” Hasai stood in the doorway, old and bald and looking ready to fall to pieces. “Anyhow, the rules. First, no touching the paintings or the sculptures. Look all you like, but run your little grubs along any of them, and I’ll send you straight back to Veni.”
“No touching.” I stared at him, stupid as stone. “Well and good.”
“And the second, no leaving your room at night. I’ve work to do. I won’t be disturbed. I’m loud and messy and very, very particular about my work. Do all you like during the day, but if you’re not in your room by sunset, you’re no guest of mine. It’s a prickly rule, I’ll admit, but it’s mine.”
“Well and good,” I agreed. “Are the paintings yours?”
“All of them,” said Hasai.
“And the sculptures?” I doubted it. No man could be so marvelously skilled.
“See these knobby old fingers?” Hasai made crabs of his hands. “They worked every sculpture here and many others besides.”
“The carpets?” I began to believe he was a liar.
“Woven by me, every thread, every knot. Stay with me, boy, and perhaps someday I’ll show you how I did it.”
I should stop my story now. I should slap my cheek, drink a cup of wine, and teeter down the stairs to where my grandchildren are laughing. My wife would be happy to see me. She says I spend too much time up here. “Glooming.” She likes to wag her finger at me. “Always glooming. Come down and sup with us, husband. We’ve lived long and well, and yet you’re glooming.”
She is right, of course. But no, I must remember this. I do the same every night. Tonight is no different.
I came to live with Hasai on the outskirts of Tessera. His initial kindness stuck to me in the sort of way I had rarely experienced in Veni. His house atop the cliff was ancient and weathered on the outside, but so like a prince’s palace within the walls. He seemed like a father and an uncle all wrapped up into one brittle old body. How could I not trust him? How could I not accept his offer to stay as long as I should like?
On my first morning in his house, he dropped a pouch full of coins into my hand. “Go into Tessera, my lad,” he told me. “Spend as you will and make friends with all those you meet. We are a small city, only three and a half hundred. Wander as you like, but return before dark, else out in the wild I’ll put you.”
I should have thought it odd. Why, if he’s so willing to help, does the old man care when I come and go? It’s not as if I mean any harm.
And yet, like a puppy possessed of a new master, I decided in my heart never to disappoint him. He will feed me, I reminded myself. He offers me a bed with cleaner linens than I’ve ever known. My room will be warm at night. The walls are covered with paintings of women most men could never dream of. My floors are soft as silk, and in the morning the sun will shine in through my three windows as though happy to see me. I will love this Hasai and treat him as my own grandfather, for he deserves it.
That morning, I walked into Tessera.
My horse had wandered off in the night, and I’d no grief left for him. With my pouch full of coins, I strode down the cliffs and into the city as though it had always been mine. Tessera was a pretty place. Its folk had mined the white rocks right out of the cliffs, polished them to a keen shine, and built up a grand city of the stuff. I saw many thousand houses, all white and clean and with windows open to the sun. Some were full of families, but many others were empty and ready to be moved into. I should have thought the empty houses odd, but instead I remember thinking, here’s a second chance for me. Tessera is everything Veni was not. I hear laughter. I see smiles. People are talking to one another, and not only because they have to, but because they want to. If I fit in here, one of these houses could be mine.
Hasai’s coins bought me all I wanted and more. I breakfasted at the city’s only inn, and they were so happy to have a guest they fed me enough for three. They watched me take every bite, topped off my cup with chilled milk whenever I took a sip, and sent me out the door with a sweetloaf under my arm and a belly ready to burst. It was surely the best breakfast I’d ever had.
After breakfast, I wandered down an alley and found myself at a wine-maker’s shop. When the owner saw me nosing, he and his pretty daughter led me down to the cellars. The racks were lined with bottles new and old, and the walls stacked with barrels that smelled of trees I’d never had the pleasure to walk beneath. “Two hundred years of making wine for Tessera,” the man told me. “But now I’ve more bottles than I’ll ever be able to sell. Your purse is nigh bursting, my friend. Care to buy any?”
“Of course,” I said. I’d never had wine before, but I knew I wanted some. I’d heard it could steal a man’s sorrows and send him off to dreamless sleeps. I never should have bought the first six bottles. As it happened, deep sleeps were not what I needed.
“How is it you’ve more bottles than you can sell?” I remember asking the man’s daughter as she escorted me back into the sunlight.
“Our customers are all gone.” She smiled. I took it for flirtation. I was wrong.
“Gone?”
“Away,” she explained. “Gone.”
“Oh.” I must have sounded like a fool.
After ferrying my bread and bottles back to Hasai’s and finding no sign of the old man, I decided to return to Tessera. I’d seen no sunnier day since the storms. The wind off the ocean was warm, the grass swaying like dancing children, and the city so inviting. The more I tasted of Tessera, the more I liked it. People smiled not just for each other; they smiled for me. I must have been a novelty for them. Girls ran out of their houses to walk beside me. Children led me on play chases through the alleys. Wives blew kisses from second-story windows, and husbands stopped their labors just to ask me about me and my life.
I remember one such man. He was a miller, and his hands were powdery white when he came out of his dwelling to greet me. Of all the people I had met, the miller was most interested in how I came to stay at Hasai’s. “An old house, that one, the oldest in Tessera,” he said when he learned I’d taken a room there.
“Oh?” I asked, stupid again.
“Aye. Two hundred years old, and full o’ treasures, they tell. Is it true? I’ve never been up that cliff in all my life.”
“Full of treasure, indeed,” I answered. “Sculptures, paintings, and fineries such as I’ve never seen.”
“Well-preserved?” The miller’s question was curious.
“Well-maintained,” I said. “Clean as if Hasai had made them all yestereve.”
The miller shrugged and grinned and gave me a look like my father used to give me when I was a boy. “And you simply made yourself at home? Just unlocked the door and helped yourself?”
“I’m no squatter,” I said. “I was invited.”
“Invited?” the miller scoffed, but just as quickly turned friendly again. “Well, good on you, lad. I’ll not begrudge you being bold and such. Though rare’s the man who can sleep in a house so empty. ”
I should have asked him why he said it, and why he said it the way he did. Alas, me the dunce, I strolled right past his mill and into the fields beyond. The sun is high. The grass is green, I remember thinking. Best not to stay and trouble the miller too long. He’ll want to finish his work and take a walk the same as I.
That eve, I arrived back at Hasai’s house in time to keep his second rule. I supped alone at his table until sunset, at which point I took my wine and bread and shut myself in my room. The wine was good, so very good. I slept deeper than the sea beyond the cliffs, and the only sounds I remember were the rain and the old man working into the late hours.
When I awoke the next morn, I found Hasai in the room directly across the hall from mine. He’d torn up the room’s carpet in the night, and had begun laying tiles in its place.
“But…” I could barely contain my shock. “The carpet was new. It was soft as grass, the plushest thing I’ve ever walked on. I know it’s not my business, but why would you remove it?”
“You’re right, lad.” He strained to stand, his bones creaking and cracking. He’d finished laying a single small mosaic of tiles in place, but the bare floor was large enough for several hundred more. “The carpet was wondrous, wasn’t it? But I’ve a new idea in mind. Nobody buys my tiles anymore. They haven’t for years. I’ve lost the art a bit. I’ll tile this floor. I’ll make a masterpiece, and then I’ll be gone.”
“You don’t mean you’ll die, do you?”
“And if I did?” The old man’s look sent me scurrying.
Of all the things I remember about Tessera, my first full week is the sharpest. Every morning, I followed the same routine. I breakfasted at the inn, perused the cellars at the winery, ran with the children down the alleys, and talked with girls in the streets. Every day felt sunnier and warmer than the one before it. The rains washing over the cliffs each night left the fields dewy and the streets full of puddles, but under the sun the skies were clear. Every morning was a welcome sight. Every new person I met took me farther from the horrors of home. Every girl I met smiled at me. Every meal I devoured left me satisfied.
And every day, someone in Tessera went missing.
The first day, it was the miller’s wife. I remember seeing her watching from the window as her husband and I had conversed. She had been beautiful, and her smile so like the sun upon my cheek. But when I saw the miller for the second time, he brought me inside his home, sat me down at his table, and closed the shutters tight.
“Missing?” I gaped after he’d finished his tale. “I don’t understand. I saw her in the window just yesterday. And you say you heard her singing to your daughter just before sundown.”
“I know.” He looked weary beyond words, well past the point of more tears. “She was, and I did.”
“Well…” I stammered. “How is the whole city not searching for her? She could be in one of the empty houses. She could be out in the fields or up on the cliffs. We have to find her, and soon.”
The miller did not move. He just sat in his chair, the shadows heavy as storm clouds on his brow. “You’ve never been to Tessera before, boy. You don’t know.”
“I still don’t understand.” I wanted to shake the sense back into him. “She could be out there. She could be alive!”
“She’s not. And she isn’t.” He shook his head at me, and I went silent. “You see all those empty houses out there? You see them? There’re thousands, many more empty than full, all white stones and white roofs and white doors. Up until a decade or so ago, they used to be full of families, they did, but Tessera is quiet now, and it must seem to a lad like you that it has always been this way. It hasn’t. These streets used to flow with rivers of folk, with merchants from inland, children and old folk and soldiers and such. But now look at it. You see a smile from one window, but you walk past a dozen more before you see another. It’s not because you’re not worth smiling at. It’s because the pretty things who do all the smiling are gone.”
“Gone?” I asked the sam
e question as I had of the wine-maker’s daughter.
“Missing. Likely dead.” The miller told me. “One a day, every day for the last dozen years. Except for yesterday and the day before. We’d hoped you were an omen, we did. But you’re not, are you? The others will still smile for you, but not for long.”
I could hardly believe it. I shambled back to Hasai’s in a stupor. My heart beat faster, but my blood moved slower. I had so many questions, so many shadows in my mind. When the old man proved absent, I drank myself to sleep again. Once more, the rain and Hasai’s work on his tiles were all I remembered of the night.
When I walked into Tessera the next morn, I tried to pretend I had not spoken with the miller. The innkeepers all smiled for me, the wine-maker and his daughter sold me a crate at half the normal price, and three lovely girls walked with me as they had the previous day. It was the same every day that week. I followed my routine, and all seemed well. Everyone treated me as though nothing had changed. The miller was only having fun with me, I convinced myself. His wife is perfectly fine. She was only hiding.
But when I returned to the miller’s house on the eighth day, he told me what had happened.
“The tailor.” He sat me down at his table again. “The only good one we had, gone in the night, same as my Lilia. And then there’s the shepherd, the carpenter, another farmer, and the fisherman’s three daughters.”
“It can’t be true,” I reasoned. “No one else has said a word.”
“And yet here we are,” said the miller. “I know you’ve your doubts. But if you won’t believe me, take your questions to the widows, the orphans, and the houses ten years empty. Ask all those who smile for you, and watch their smiles melt away.”
I knew right then he was telling the truth. The orphans are the children who run with me in the streets, I realized. The girls who walk with me are the widows, and the empty houses are for whole families gone missing. “Why doesn’t someone do something?” I argued. “And if not, why don’t you all leave?”
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