I stood knee deep in shallow water that seemed to stretch forever.
Warped images of the city in the clouds shone on its mirrored surface, mingling with the yellow gold of the setting sun. It was easiest to see this time of day.
I looked up at it, squinting to make out new details, imagining myself flying in one of the chariots zipping through its gates. I could almost feel the rush of wind, the warmth of the sunlight spilling through its massive domes. I strained my eyes, trying to make out a section of the city that I hadn't seen before, one filled with lush greens.
maybe a forest.. I marveled
A familiar longing twisted in my gut as it drifted out of view, it's departure a reminder that it wasn't for us. It's iridescent spires and shimmering lattices were never meant for commoners, it was for the gods.
Around me, women chattered their gossip as I worked, scanning the surface for flowers.
My eyes rested on a patch where they glowed a bit brighter than the rest. Their petals, whiter than snow, seemed to breathe, as azure light moved into them from the stems beneath the water. A recent burial.
I strained my mind, trying to remember who had died recently, but quickly gave up. Too many had died in the last week alone, and we weren't allowed to mark the graves. That was to discourage any visitors that might trample over the delicate network of vines that lay beneath the surface of the water. Only Ashands were permitted to wade the shallow waters of the garden, collecting the souls that bloomed there. I felt hollow as I imagined the stranger resting below. Like a tide had gone out, leaving only the cold, salt-stung bones of reality inside me. I shook away the feeling as I gathered the vines neatly in my hand, cutting away the flowers in one stroke before placing them in my basket.
I never knew why the work made me sad. It wasn't as if I knew them, and according to the Sanctari they weren't dead at all, just empty vessels. Unbound from bone and breath, or however the psalm went.
When my basket was full, I set off along the narrow trail that led back toward the village. The trail was little more than a line of wooden slats half-sunken into the marsh, slick with mud and worn smooth by years of footsteps.
As I walked, the boards shifted under my boots. In places where the mud thinned, I caught glimpses of older, broken timbers beneath the surface, like the ribs of a carcass buried shallow, waiting for the water to swallow them again. I wondered how many Ashands had walked these steps, and why no one bothered to remember any that came before their mothers and fathers.
The village seemed to rise into view as I walked. Stone cottages and wooden huts pressed close together, their thatched roofs slumping under years of rain and wind. Smoke from their chimneys hung low over the rooftops.
I nodded to the other women returning from the fields, though few looked my way. Their baskets sagged under the weight of blooms as we made our way toward the church waiting at the heart of the village.
Its black spire rose above the rooftops like a needle, piercing the sky, its stone walls carved with symbols that few commoners knew how to read. It didn't matter; they weren't meant for us. A large bell hung in silence from its upper tower, rung only on two occasions: birth, and burial.
I bowed my head to the guards as I walked past the outer gate, neither returned the gesture, their faces unreadable behind those strange helmets. I'd seen them with their helmets off before, they looked like anyone else from the village, at least more like us than the Sanctari did.
A line of women had already formed, single file and silent, winding like a procession of shadows up the carved stone steps. The air shifted the moment I passed through the threshold. Cooler. Thinner. The way it changed made my skin tighten, like stepping into a place where your name was already known, and not kindly.
As I moved to take my place in line, an elbow caught me in the ribs, followed by several girls pushing past as if I wasn't there.
"If you spent less time daydreaming and more time working, we wouldn't always be short," one hissed at me, loud enough for the others to hear.
I stumbled as the last of them, Ada, shouldered past me.
"We might miss quota again because of you,"
A few chuckles rippled down the line.
I kept my eyes trained on the stone tiles beneath my feet, gripping the edge of my basket tighter.
I doubted they were really worried about missing quota; we were ahead of most villages. People started treating me that way the moment I was old enough to wonder out loud.
What they hated was the way my questions always made them uncomfortable. It wasn't as if we were forbidden from asking questions, people just seemed unwilling or unable to consider them.
They answered the simple ones fine; 'where do you live?', 'how many winters old?'.
It was the 'why' questions that made them flinch, like I'd spat on the floor, and they were stepping back to avoid the mess.
The line crawled forward, each girl stepping up in turn to ascend the low altar at the end of the nave. The Sanctari stood behind it. Fully robed and masked, they appeared as ghostly pale figures that could pass for statues if not for the slight nods of acknowledgement they gave as each girl approached the altar. Their masks were identical: blank white ovals with long vertical slits for eyes. Atop their heads laid embossed crowns shaped like petaled thorns. Their robes shimmered faintly with silver threads finer than cobwebs, stitched with the same vine-like symbols carved into the stone beneath us.
Even without their adornments there was something unnerving about their appearance. An uncanny feeling of seeing something that only looks like a person.
The flowers were placed gently on the obsidian table, glowing faintly beneath the cathedral's fractured light. There were no pews in the temple. No seats for the living. Only space carved out for those who served.
The interior loomed around us, a space that unsettled me despite the comfort it seemed to bring everyone else.
The walls, carved from stone, rose like cliffs, lined with uneven columns that stretched into an arched ceiling shaped like a jaw mid-scream.
I always felt like I was being watched there. Measured. Judged. Not by the priests, almost by the church itself. As if it remembered everything that had ever passed through it. As if it had already measured my soul and found me unworthy.
When my turn came, I climbed the steps, my boots ringing softly against the stone. I kept my eyes down. Whether they had eyes or not beneath the masks, I never wanted to see them. I knelt, displaying the contents of my basket to the priests. The flowers within pulsed a soft glow, as if sighing a breath.
"I consign these souls to the eternal garden," I recited, as I tipped the basket, transferring its contents to the table.
The reply was low and disembodied, distorted by the mask, like something whispered through a veil. "May our living gods preserve them."
The words settled around me like dust, weathered old things that no longer brought me any comfort.
I bowed my head and turned to leave.
A shiver crept along my spine where I could feel their eyes, or whatever lay behind those slits, following me down the steps.
I made my way home, past narrow alleyways choked with steam and moss, past an old well where children played. They seemed full of joy, as they ran around each other playing some game I vaguely remembered from my own childhood. One of them sat digging in the dirt nearby. I couldn't help but smile, even though I knew some of them were only a few years separated from the harshness of life here.
I noticed I wasn't the only one watching them play. Resting with his spine pressed to the stone of a nearby house, a man looked on as the children splashed through puddles. I realized he was their father as one of the children ran over to him, proudly displaying an interesting rock they had found.
"Look da," said the boy.
The man smiled through sad eyes as he patted the boy's head. He opened his mouth to say something to his boy, but a fit of coughs prevented him from speaking. I recognized the sadness in his eyes; it was the sadness of a father who knew he didn't have many days left with his son. His eyes flitted up at me as he noticed me watching, I forced a smile, nodding to him as I continued past.
My home was visibly worn compared to the two that flanked either side. Moss crept higher along the stonework and the roof dipped in places where the beams hadn't been replaced in time. One shutter hung crooked, swaying and groaning with each breath of wind. We didn't have the means to mend it.
I stepped inside and gently closed the door, as though any sound might worsen the silence that already weighed on the place. The smell of damp wood and old ash greeted me like an old, unwelcome friend.
The room was small, one space trying to be many things. A table stood at its center, scarred and stained with years of use; four mismatched chairs gathered around it like huddled figures. The fireplace nearby crackled faintly, its heat barely reaching the cold edges of the room. Across from it sat the bed, large enough for all of them, though it looked more like a burden than a comfort these days.
My father was where he always was, in the chair closest to the fire, turned toward the flames but never really looking at them. His lips moved, mumbling something to himself, words too soft and broken to make sense of. His hands rested on his knees, fingers twitching now and then like they remembered holding something, a weapon maybe.
My brother, Rheinan, sat at the edge of the bed curled at our mother's side. His small frame resting against the edge of the mattress, head nestled beside her hip like a watchful pup. He stirred as I entered, blinking sleep from his eyes.
"Aine's home," he said, in a tone hushed but bright with excitement.
Our mother opened her eyes, and a weak smile touched her face as she saw me. She parted her lips to speak, but the words were lost in a sudden, wracking fit of coughs. I rushed forward, not bothering to take off my boots. Rheinan sat up fully, already holding a cloth in his small hands. He offered it with quiet urgency, and their mother pressed it to her mouth.
When she pulled it away, a dark smear of red marked the fabric, my breath caught at the sight. Rheinan looked at me with wide eyes, silently begging for reassurance I couldn't give. She was getting worse.
I moved to the basin and dipped a rag into the cool water, the clay bowl shivering faintly on the warped wood of the table as I wrung it out. The fabric dripped as I returned to her side, pressing it gently to her brow.
"love.. you, Aine," she rasped, the words scraping like broken glass from her throat.
Her fingertips were cold as river stones as she ran her hand against my cheek.
"I love you too," I croaked, choking back a sob, knowing better than to cry in front of Rheinan.
She was thirty-seven. Nearing the end, by most standards. Though the Sanctari and the gods seemed to live forever, commoners didn't make it past forty. Not because of war or misfortune, but because the sickness always takes us by then. It was like what killed men who worked the mines, but miners tended to die in their early thirties. My mother was lucky enough to have worked the farms instead, growing food for the village. Still, it didn't feel like she had been lucky as we watched her wither away in front of us.
I paused my work to look at Rheinan, his eyes glossy with tears he was trying desperately to hold back. Even at his young age he knew that crying would only bring their mother more pain. Her and my father had given birth to us later in life than most, and because of that Rheinan would have to grow up without a mother before he'd even turned 10 years old.
I dipped the cloth again and wiped the blood from the corners of her lips, smoothing it down along her jaw. She smiled faintly through cracked lips, still trying to make it easier for us. Even now. Her body was failing in ways I didn't understand. Her hair had begun to fall out in strands. Her gums bled when she spoke. Some of her teeth began to loosen and fall out like roots pulled from dry soil. Some mornings her skin turned blotched and raw, her veins visible beneath like ink stains.
The Sanctari forbade medicine. To intervene in the natural course of the body was to defy the divine order of things. Not that it would matter. Nothing known to us could ease this sickness.
"Isn't there anything you can do?" Rheinan asked, his eyes pleading as he looked up at me. I could never bring myself to tell him the truth, that there was nothing anyone could do. Instead, I motioned him to the shelves that hung along the wall opposite the bed.
"Bring me those two," I said, pointing at a section of the shelves where several jars sat, each containing different assortments of dried leaves and roots. The purple ones, and the grey root next to them."
Rheinan leapt to his feet, eager to help any way he could. I glanced at my father, annoyed, wishing he could do anything more than sit and stare. I stopped myself.
That's not fair, it's not his fault.
My mother smiled again as she watched me working, carefully grinding the leaves and roots in a wooden mortar, just as she'd taught me.
She'd spent most of her life working the fields. Alongside the planting and harvesting, she had learned to watch what else grew. What crept between rows of grain, what lined the paths near the river or bloomed in shade where crops would never grow. She knew which plants could soothe a fever, which could settle a stomach, and which to avoid altogether. When I was younger, she would take me out with her, pointing to leaves and stems, whispering their names to me as though naming old friends.
I crushed the brittle leaves in steady circles, mixing in the grey root until its sharp scent stung like bitter smoke. The mixture wouldn't cure her. Nothing would. But if I steeped it long enough, it might ease her cough for a while, enough for her to rest. A mercy measured in moments.
And it helped. Helped Rheinan feel like he was helping, helped me feel less like I was standing helpless in the dark, watching my mother slowly fall apart.
I poured the steeped mixture into a small clay cup, the steam curling upward like breath in cold air. Carefully, I slipped an arm beneath her shoulders and lifted her just enough to bring the cup to her lips. She was lighter than she should've been. Too light. Her bones pressed through her nightdress like twigs under worn linen.
"Here," I whispered, steadying the cup with both hands. "Just a little."
She drank slowly, in small sips, her throat working with effort as though just swallowing was a task her body had forgotten how to do. It was hard to see her so helpless.
"Thank.. you.. Aine," she managed as she sank back into the pillow, the cup empty in my hands. Her eyes fluttered closed as I brushed a few strands of hair from her brow. I could tell she was still in pain, but she was resting.
That was something.
Father mumbled something barely audible over the soft hiss of the fire, still staring at the dying coals, still lost somewhere far from here.
We all sat in silence for a moment before Rheinan's stomach let out a growl that brought me back to the present.
I moved to the hearth, setting the used cup aside to prepare what little food we had left. I scanned the shelves above, noting anything edible we had left. A bit of root, some stale bread, and a scrap of dried meat I'd been saving. It wasn't much, but it would be warm, and warm had to count for something.
I eyed my father as I worked, cursing him for being no help, then hating myself for thinking it. He hadn't always been like this. I remembered a time, just after Rheinan was born, when he used to lift me in his arms, spinning me in the fields until I laughed so hard my ribs ached. But those days were long gone.
Not long after Rheinan's birth, the gods descended to our village, their golden chariots humming low above the soil. They didn't bother with words. They simply pointed at the men they wanted, like choosing animals for slaughter.
I remembered the day he left. He kissed Mother, clapped his hand over my head, and gave me a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. I could still see him waving as he climbed aboard one of the floating carriages, the others pressed in around him, some weeping, some stone-faced. I waved back until my arm ached, refusing to cry. Hoping that somehow, he would be one of the few that managed to come back.
Part of him did come back, but not the father I remembered. Like all those returned by the gods, he had no memory of his time with them. But unlike them, he came back missing more, it was as if the pieces that made him who he was were missing. Like part of him stayed behind.
Rheinan never met the man who would toss me in the air and catch me with a laugh, who told terrible jokes by the fire and tucked me in with a kiss to my forehead. To him, Father was just the figure in the chair by the fire, a hallowed shell of who he was. A man who'd already died a long time ago, but somehow still managed to breathe.
There were moments when something would stir behind his eyes. Flashes of realization, like embers flaring up in dying ash. Once he even spoke my name, soft and broken, as if it hurt him to remember.
But those moments never lasted. Just as quickly as they came, the light would drain from his eyes again, and he would slip back into whatever cage held him prisoner in his mind.
I stirred the thin broth, listening to the hollow pop of the firewood as it cracked and shifted. I pushed the thoughts away, buried them where Rheinan wouldn't see. He didn't need to know how much we had lost.
I ladled the stew into three cracked bowls, setting one carefully by Father's side, though he would hardly touch it. His eyes barely flickered at the smell. I motioned for Rheinan to come sit.
He shuffled over, rubbing sleep from his eyes with one hand. When he reached the table, he paused, glancing at the sad portion in his bowl.
"Is it supposed to smell like that?" he asked, wrinkling his nose, though there was no real complaint in his voice, just a tired attempt at teasing.
I let out a breath of a laugh and ruffled his hair. "You cook if you don't like it."
He grinned, a small thing, but real, and slid into his seat with a huff like he was already bearing the weight of the world. He picked up his spoon and stirred the broth, watching the bits swirl inside.
"I like it when you cook," he said after a moment, quieter now. "It's just not as good as mom's."
I just smiled and passed him the bread. He took it eagerly, dunking it into the broth with both hands.
My father still sat in his chair by the fire, the untouched bowl cooling at his side.
I watched him for a long moment, spoon in hand, the broth it held growing cold between my fingers.
"I'll help da eat today," Rheinan said, noticing my stare.
Our father was older than Mother by a few years, closer to forty than she was. By all rights, the sickness should've taken hold of him first. But it hadn't. He hadn't shown a single sign. Not a cough or sore.
Maybe it wasn't age.
Maybe it was this place.
He was gone for six years. Six years breathing different air, eating different food.
The thought chilled me more than the wind slipping through the cracked shutters.
Rheinan dunked another soggy piece of bread into his bowl, his face calm in a way that made my chest ache. I couldn't let him see the thoughts turning behind my eyes. I didn't want him to be like me, always questioning everything, always making everyone uncomfortable.
A loud scrape broke the silence as Rheinan pushed his bowl away and slumped back in his chair with a sigh.
"I'm still hungry," he grumbled, poking at the wood grain of the table with his spoon as if it might somehow yield more food if he pressed hard enough.
I forced a smile onto my face and reached over to ruffle his hair.
"Don't worry. I'll get my ration tomorrow when I'm done in the garden," I promised.
"But rations aren't for another week," Rheinan said, doubt in his voice. His words caught me off-guard; he was getting far too smart for an eight-year-old.
"Yes.. But your sister just so happens to work in the garden. I'll ask the Sanctari if they can give my rations early."
He looked up at me, a glimmer of trust in his eyes that made my chest tighten.
"Maybe they'll even give us something sweet," I added, though the words tasted like ash in my mouth.
I knew they would only ask me why I was sharing my rations, why Rheinan wasn't working for his own. I swallowed the anger starting to rise as I thought of a frail, eight-year-old boy working in the mines. What stung most was doubt that anyone else would find it unusual.
Rheinan smiled the kind of smile only a child could manage, turning his attention back to licking the last of the broth from his spoon.
I rose from the table and moved quietly around the room, gathering the empty bowls and setting them back by the hearth to wash later. As I passed the bed, I slowed to check on Mother.
She had drifted into sleep, her breathing shallow but steady for now. A faint line of blood still marked the cloth tucked in her hand, but her face was peaceful in a way it rarely was anymore.
I pulled the thin blanket higher over her shoulders and smoothed the hair back from her forehead, careful not to wake her. For a moment, I just stood there, letting the sounds of the fire and Rheinan's humming fill the silence.
"Finish up and get ready for bed," I said softly. "Tomorrow's a long day."
He grinned, as if the world wasn't crumbling around us, and I clung to that small, stubborn piece of hope a little longer.