Keeping The Fire: A Luminary's Hands

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The oldest winter houses of Easterners are built into the ground. It stays warmer there, holds the heat, fights against the strongest winds. Eastern men found better ways to build, better hearths, tighter windows, and thicker walls. But thankfully, the winters are never as harsh in the east. In the west, the winter houses are all still built into the ground. It is too cold for innovation and the People of such lands must fight and labor just to survive. As she crawled along the packed earth and tile floor of the tomb Polena thanked the Will that she had this small blessing of a tomb below ground. Even with spring coming it surely was too cold on the surface for anyone to live.

More and more she felt herself again, but spent and weary. It was the pain like that after a fever, where the bones still ache and the body must be forced to get it to move. The first thing she had sought had been water. Within the tomb it was black as the space between the stars, but any sound was redoubled. She was drawn to the drip of water and crawled for what felt like a hundred paces to reach it. She barked her shins, bashed her head, jabbed her fingers all along the way in the darkness. The place had gone from caressing her to attacking her. In time, she found it, a puddle of water about as deep as two fingers, tricking down the roots from the trees above and pooling in the cracks between two tiles. She drank carefully, threw up until her sides retched, rested, and began to drink again. Some time later she thought to find Mehethe.

She was too hoarse and weak to call out, but she listened until she heard noise, the sound of breathing and a rhythmic scraping of metal on earth. She crawled to it. It was too dark to see a thing and the Barrow was full of small treacheries, pits, snags, and sharp stones. But the plan of it was straight forward enough, and besides Polena felt as if she knew her way, like the lay of the place had been scored into her eyes and was still there when she closed them. When she got close to the noise it abruptly stopped. There was a long lingering moment in the darkness until Polena managed to feebly call out.

“Djaught?”

The scraping and breathing resumed again. As Polena crawled closer, Polena felt soft, cold earth under her fingers and she realized that he was trying to dig his way out of the Barrow with his blade as a shovel. She sat by him, let him work, judged him. She did not know how long it had been, but the fact that he was still alive and at this labor meant it was not years. Of course it couldn't have been that long, and rather than be frightened at the animus that might give her such a thought, she instead managed a smile at the absurdity of thinking it. He moved without haste and she could tell by his breathing he was exhausted. She tried to figure out by the lay of the main hall where they were in Barrow. To her recollection it could not have been anywhere near the side of the hill.

“Do you know where you are digging?” she asked, then, when he did not answer “do you know why you are digging that hole Djaught?”

“To get out of the tomb.”

“And do you know that this is not the right way to reach the surface?”

“Does it matter to you, ghost?”

She decided it did not. Of all the things she could do, she thought that touching him would be the least safe. That was what made her do it. She lean up to her knees, reached tentatively from the darkness, and put her hand on his shoulder. He stopped moving. There was no blow in response. Just haggard, breathing. She felt, in that touch, as only a Luminary can. She had seen soldier back from the front, had felt the heaving of a dying man's chest after he had worked himself to death, knew the pain of chronic injury, the sting of trauma, the bite of cold, the stain of bitterness, the resignation of the damned. All of these things she could feel in his body, each like the color of a thread in a tapestry. In his words, in his expression the Djaught showed no emotion, or at most anger. His whole life he had worked for the sole purpose of hiding his true nature. He had carved out a place inside himself where his heart ought to have been. But his body betrayed him. He was tired, bitter, resigned, and frightened.

“Rest,” she said, “You have worked enough Djaught. I will dig a while.” He would not move, would give her the blade, would not even reply. So she did as she said she would, crawled passed him, and began to dig in the cold soil with her hand scraping out clay, sand, and rock with tired fingers. In time, she heard him recline, and in time beyond that, she heard him sleeping. Then she stopped, sat, and made to pray. But when prayers were not strong in coming she thought instead of writing. She composed a letter home to Denza. The grace it granted her was just as nourishing.

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