The Sun Wound

Part 1

The forest. Late spring. Sun high on the wide glass sky. A voice, a man’s, scatters the gusty silence of the wind.

“Hasten the journey, embrace the return.”

Blackbirds shiver through the needling knot of spruce and pine. The birds take wing - the beasts take shelter - as a man huffs along a narrow ribbon of dirt through the trunks. He breaches the woodline, steps into a sunlit clearing. He stops. He lets the rope of the sled he pulls fall slack in his wake. He pulls the front of his tunic up to his whiskered face. Wool gathers the sweat-dew from his alabaster, careworn skin. Golden Muira veins stand out on his wrists as he lets the tunic fall. He catches his breath while scanning the earth-and-wood home across the wooded clearing. The man calls out, louder now.

“Shrewd mother, with your rabbit’s ears, are you within?”

A pause. Then, sound stirs inside. A moment passes before the heavy pine door opens, releasing an Old Woman’s soft rasping.

“…never, my son, thought to put my eyes upon you before the first summer centipede. Blessed gods, flesh, bone, spirit; my son stands again at his hearth!”

Szera maj’Erdo emerges from the cool, dry earthen home. Her beetle-black eyes shrink as she squints across the sunny hearth clearing. She raises a hand to shield her eyes. The skin is wrinkled eggshell; the veins, aged to the color of honey.

Szera spots her son, Akerat maj’Erdo, where he stands beside the sled. Her chest heaves a breath through an open, toothless smile. She tilts her head up, searching the shadows of the pines behind her son. But Akerat is alone with his sled.

Shuffling forth from the porch, plucking a thimble from her index and tucking it into a pocket of her brown apron where she will forget it later, Szera waves a hand at the rolling woods. “You pulled the sled all the way from the river?”

Akerat, releasing tension in a breath, takes up the rope again. “A short step for an old spear, dear old woman.”

“You should’ve come and harnessed Bell. She’d haul…”

“I saw, as I pulled the canoe in and tied it to the dock, cairns along the bank. Have those eyes or ears of yours caught signs of any rookpups?”

Szera stops and scratches her nose. “Stacked rocks? Rookpups? What would chimerics be bothering so far down from the snowy Villgorazas, my son? It’s only the regular birds and beasts that kept the wood alive since the day you left,” Noticing her son pulling the rope taut again, Szera waves her hand at him. “Oh, but leave the sled for now, and just let me fetch Bell or Evelin.”

“Mother,” Akerat checks her with a quick reply, “you forget those Elks for now, and just let me get these supplies to the storehouse.”

Szera ignores the order, but shuffles alongside the sled and bends to collect one of the sacks. “A good deal?” she asks.

“Fair enough. Gyula - he’s one I can trust to buy one thing or other - he asked for more of those socks of yours.”

“Shame. I think I have just a couple wool skeins saved in the old tackle box.”

“I picked you up a whole bag, all different colors.”

“You know, before we had the rye field, your grandfather fed the hearth entirely on his catch from the river.”

“The dealers did us right. Two bags of albumas, a bolt of sackcloth.”

Szera tucks the bolt of sackcloth under her shoulder. “And candles? My eyes can hardly tell your aunt Vanda from great grandfather Martos when night creeps through the windows.”

“All the essentials are there,” Akerat grunts as he heaves the sled over a path. “And an amphora of wine, as you see. And will you set those sacks back? Let me get it to the storeroom.”

“Is this elk jerky? You know Bell and Evelin…”

“It’s beaver. I caught it as I passed downriver. The dryer fixed it up for us in exchange for the skins. I… I picked up some special gear with the moose skin I took last autumn.”

“Special; I should say! Is this wire? And this - a quiver of bolts? What need have we of arbalest bolts?”

“Dear old woman, are you sure you haven’t been harassed by rookpups in my absence? Or, has any other trouble passed through our glen?”

Szera shifts the bolt of cloth under her arm. “What kind of trouble?”

“I suppose… any new sounds, or smells?”

“I thought I heard your aunt - my sister Csilla - in the squeal of the cellar hinge yesterday. Complaining about her arthritis I expect.”

“But no humans, no chimeric monsters? No Golani?”

“Sky’s spots! It’s been three summers since even the sheriffs passed this way. What would humans or monsters have in our stretch of woodland? The worst we suffered in your absence was that late spring snow. Four, five days ago? I worried you’d get caught outside. Snow’s especially poisonous when it’s late in the season like that, you know.”

“I booked a room in town.” Akerat drags the sled through the last stretch of grass. He stops beneath the brown, sloping, shake roof of the hearth. He catches deep breaths on the round wall of earth-mortared wood, beside the granary window. “Anyway I picked up a satchel of herbs. Ground melyna. Just so we have medicine ready for next winter.”

Szera, his mother, sets the bolt of cloth on the window sill. “What is the trouble?”

“I saw a few strange faces in town.”

“My grandsons! I thought they might-” The old woman swallows the words short. “Well they wouldn’t be strangers though.”

The Muira father lights his pipe. Takes a long smoke. Cools his head under the eaves. “They’ll return in their own time. Faith, mother.”

“I know.”

“They must gather their own scars.”

“So,” the grandmother shuffles, “what strange faces?”

“A human. If you’ll believe.”

“This far into the king’s country? Was he from one of those human counties over the mountains?”

“Volon counties. And I don’t think so. They didn’t talk like him; the humans I knew in war.”

“Talk like him how?”

“That’s the strange part, mother. It’s why I bought these odd bits. He talked like one of those seers. The temple priests who listen to the wind, instead of the household gods it carries.”

The old mother snaps. “Speak no ill of the gods.”

“I don’t advance their teachings. He spoke what he’d seen though, or at least what he said he’d seen. Trouble’s coming, so said this prophet.”

“Sounds like false preaching.”

“I don’t think humans have household gods, mother.”

“Probably what’s wrong with them,” says Akerat’s mother. She glowers at the sled of goods.

“The Gloomcoming, he called it,” the son presses on. “Gloom. Doom. A newer eviler age. I figure it’s a second invasion of the restless.”

The overhang of the room holds the two in its shade. Beyond, honeyed sunlight swoops down from the sky of curving glass; shining over the swaying fronds of the hearth’s green crop of rye, and the pines that roil in waves among the hills; beside the hidden stream, whose gurgle fills the long silence between mother and son.

Szera finally speaks. “My days… The restless won’t bother my tulip beds, will they?”

Akerat nudges the wire roll on the sled with his toe. “I’ll fix up some defenses. Don’t flood those wrinkles with worry, dear old mother. Those Golani may send their mechanics over the mountains. But they’d find us rough and ready.”

“I’m sure that this patch’s Elder knows best how to run his hearth,” Szera folds her arms across her apron. “But do you think that elder, if he has the time, could find it in his heart to embrace the mother who kept his home and fed his elks in his absence?”

Akerat clasps her arm in a warm hand. “Let me wash the road dirt from my body. Then, we’ll put these sundries in order.”

“There’s fresh buckets from the river - you can thank Bell for them - and the basin is ready in the middenroom. And don’t think for a moment of bringing that smelly pipe inside!”

Part 2

Akerat - face washed and wearing a clean tunic - sits on the wide wood porch before the front of the house. One after the other, he pulls on and laces two calf-boots. A bundle of thick oak dowels and the bale of wire lie on the porch to his left. From his right he picks up a thin book bound with twine between two thin plates of cedar.

“Listen to this now. It says here on page four of the Primarch’s Instructions for Muira Resistance of Foreign Occupation - ‘The secret of strong resistance is strong defense. Barriers - walls, moats, ditches, traps, tripwires, even domestic fences - can slow or deny enemy access to strategic positions and resources.’ That’s what this wire’s for, dear old mother. I saw those restless machines stopped in their tracks a hundred times over by wire and some scrap wood or metal. It gets tangled in their gears as they shamble.”

Akerat pulls wire from the spool. With a pair of cutters, he snips a two-arm length. He begins twisting the ends around two of the dowels. “Just a circle or two of these lines hidden in the grass around the clearing,” the son goes on, “will keep those gadget horrors out of the hearth. Same as it stopped them at the forts.”

Szera pokes her head from the wide mealroom window, above a window-bed of bright pink tulips. She squints against the sun. “I hope those aren’t the new chair legs we bought last summer.”

Akerat bends over the dowel he’s wrapping. “You wouldn’t want the restless hurting our elks, would you mother?”

“Oh my spirits! I forgot to milk Bell yesterday,” The mother withdraws her grey head from the window. From within, metal clangs.

“The tripwires are for our safety. You, me, and the elks.”

Szera emerges from the door behind her son with a pail. “All your reordering has my thoughts lost in the woods.” She steps onto the grass and starts towards a wattle-fenced pasture beside the home.

“It’s preparing, mother. And it’s only until we beat the second invasion.” Akerat sets one line of wire stretched between dowels to the side. He starts on another. “When I’m next in town, and I hear the king has announced our victory, and we haven’t seen any horrors for a summer, I’ll unravel all these trip lines.”

Szera, following the curved wall of the home, calls back, “Wouldn’t it be better for us to stay in town ourselves?”

“Not a bit!”

“Why not a bit?”

“Shrewd as you are, think it through, dear mother. Those restless haven’t got eyes. They’re all metal and wood. They’re like bats; drawn to sound. They’ll be drawn straight to the towns.”

Szera stops beside a gate in the wattle. She sets the pail down, unwraps a leather thong holding the gate in place, slides it open, then picks up her pail and steps through. She clicks twice. She looks back at Akerat, pinching her lips between her gums. “Should not the Hearth elder recall his hearthmates? In times of war?”

Akerat looks up. He catches his mother’s expression. “Best not. We’ll get along if we keep quiet. And use good strategies. Besides: we’re no grand ancestry. No army of sisters and uncles waits upon my summons.”

“If the towns are dangerous… Ought not Benji and Adrian-”

“My boys - your grandsons - will be fine. Sky’s spots, they’ll be safer than us. They’ll be in Bruna, studying. Or maybe they’re in an entire other span of the cylinder.” Akerat pauses and looks from under the porch roof. He glances at the sun’s disc behind the sky glass. “Perhaps the king’s taking the fight to those Golani imperialists. A sort of sallying defense.”

“Like a lion hunt?”

“If they’ve enlisted, my sons might be looking at a completely different sky right now. Surrounded by Royal Muira soldiers.”

“As long as they don’t forget their household gods.”

“They won’t.”

“I’ll be one of those gods soon too, remember.”

Akerat groans. “Mother. Don’t start.”

“I don’t want my bones thrown out to the crows, my spirit anchorless in the wind.”

“Mother!”

The old woman throws up her hands in resignation. “Bell! Evelin!” she calls, clicking again. She rattles the grain in her pail.

A lone elk emerges from the treeline at the edge of the pasture. She lopes, muscles graceful and rippling, under short, brown fur glowing with yellow daylight. She slides, silent, through the tall grass.

At the trough beside the gate, Szera pours a line of grain. The old woman watches the treeline. She calls out, louder and higher. “Bell? Bell, come along dearie!”

Akerat stands. The dowels he was holding thunk on the deckboards. He moves toward the waddle wall. “Mother,” he says; voice, low; tone, deadly calm.

Then the other elk emerges softly from the trunks. Mother and son sigh in unison. Shoulders drop. The elk saunters toward the trough.

“Why is she moving so slow?” asks Akerat. He resumes his seat and task. “Was she sickened while I was in town?”

“She’s upset,” his mother replies. “You took her calf to market.”

“Ah.”

“Come here you foolish girl,” says Szera. The elk, Bell, bends over the trough. The old woman sets the pail beneath her while she eats. With her wrinkled, pale hands, she draws the day’s milk from the udders.

Part 3

A small room. One circular wall of sooty, packed earth. A roof of wooden poles merging to a point above. Cut into the wall; passages to other rooms.

A shallow, stone pool dominates the room’s center. A multicandle - a long, oil-fed pole with holes along its span - sheds overlapping discs of warm firelight throughout the closed space. In the center of the pool rest a dozen lumpy, painted dolls of sackcloth.

Szera sits on a wicker rocking chair beside the multicandle. She holds a doll. Her long, thin fingers plunge in and out as she stitches the cloth at the back shut. Every time her hands move, the doll gives a hollow rattle.

The old mother speaks as she rocks and sews. “My son dug up my flowers! Every one - every bed I had planted. The tulips in front of the mealroom, the room that was Cousin Soma’s before she married into Novak Hearth. The golden goldenrods, the purple orchids. Even the daisies and larkspurs I had in front of your room, sister Csilla. Which, I’ll tell you, were just beginning to bloom.”

Szera stops rocking. She cocks an ear. She casts a glance at the lights on the wall. After a moment she continues speaking. “I’m happy it doesn’t bother you, my dear. I myself don’t see the point. He’s stacked pallets over the windows! I thought the wires were going to keep those sleepless off the house. Why also the window covering? I can already feel the air ‘musty’-ing. You will too, dear sister, when your sack starts molding!”

Akerat steps through one of the portals in the wall, joining the glow of his candle to the multicandle lights. “It’s for your safety, mother,” he says.

“Oh, son! I hadn’t heard you come in.”

“I saw one of those restless launch a javelin right through the leather tunic of an infantryman, clear up on a fort’s wall. Some machines have quite the arm. The pallets will stop them hitting us through the windows.”

Szera sets her wicker chair rocking again. She turns her nose back to sewing. “The household gods don’t like being shut up in a dark hearth all day. You wouldn’t be pleased either.”

“Take our ancestors on a walk outside if you like,” her son answers in a distracted tone. He moves to another room, holding his candle before him in the dark. He calls back, “But keep your eyes and ears open.”

The old woman goes on stitching. Her long, pale fingers make deft plucking motions. After a moment she calls to her son in the other room. “How do they do that with other gods?”

Akerat calls back, “How do they do what?”

“Take their gods for walks? Does a priest of the Wind Temple wait until it’s gusty?”

“Probably.”

“What about those Themic priests? How would you take the sun for a walk?”

“I’m… not sure. I don’t know if Themic priests go for walks. They’re an odd bunch. I knew a few in the war. Theman’s popular among the Villgoranian Muira ancestries.”

“Odd how? Aside from only having that one Theman god to talk with.”

“They have a fixation with seasons,” A grunt, and the scrape of a box across the floor, sounds from the dim outer room. “They like to add seasons together.”

Szera looks over the sack doll in her hands, down at the other dolls in the stone pool. “Hearth; in every hour. I wouldn’t get by with only me and you, my son, and only one ancestor to gab with. I’d lose my head.”

“They have a special number. That man in town who warned about this restless invasion told it to me.”

“How would he know?”

He was a Themic priest, no doubt. Theman’s popular among humans.”

“What number was it?”

“Three thousand, six hundred, seventy-something. Seventy-five? The number of winters since Theman made the sun, is what they say.”

Szera scoffs. “How would any human know that? They don’t even live as long as we do, and I can’t count much more than a hundred myself.”

“It does sound silly.”

“Mad.”

“Those Golani who made the restless are probably Themanists themselves. I don’t think humans or Golani keep their ancestors’ bones.”

“What nonsense,” says Szera. She returns to sewing, but stops again. “Dear son of mine; you won’t - as our elder - let these gods of ours come to harm if the battle goes badly here, will you?”

“Badly how, dear old mother?” Akerat’s voice is muffled as he lifts something.

“If your window covers and tripwires don’t keep those sleepless from getting inside. What if the sleepless rip a hole right through the outer wall, and the inner wall, and stomp the bones of our gods?”

“Restless. Not sleepless.”

“Restless then.”

“They won’t reach our middenroom. You’ll recall those walls have thick poles of reinforcing pine. Metal as they are, the restless would yet find trouble ripping through thick earth and lumber.” A set of boards fall in the room where Akerat is working. He curses. “Besides, old woman, we’ll bring the smallbones of our ancestors with us if we retreat.”

Szera nods to herself. She pulls the flaps of the bone-filled doll tight with a final, firm stitch. In a lighter voice she says, “You would find whatever it is you’re seeking in your brother Bence’s room if you knocked down that window pallet.” She glances at one of the other doll bags in the pool. “Time changes neither gods nor justice. He’s never been orderly, your brother.”

Akerat pokes his bald head back into the multicandle light; scalp sweaty; golden veins standing out; breathing heavy. “I can’t find my old jerkin and cap. Have you seen them?”

“Those leather scraps you carried back from war?”

“They’re armor, mother. They’ll be useful for our defense.”

“I cut those up and burned them in the fireplace years ago.”

“What?” Akerat’s mouth drops open. He gives his mother an incredulous glare. “You’re serious? Why?”

“They were leather.”

“So?”

“I couldn’t look Bell and Evelin in the eyes when I went to feed them in the morning.”

“Oh mother…”

“Knowing we had skins like theirs - dry and cured - lying inside.”

“Well, no good can come of tears.” Akerat walks to the edge of the pool, sets his light beside the multicandle, and sits beside his mother, catching his breath. “You didn’t burn my old longspear too?”

“That’s the ash shaft with the bronze tip? I think it’s the curtain rod over the mealroom window.”

Part 4

High above the remote Erdo hearth - unimpeded by storm clouds or glass grime - the sun shines free and clear across hinterlands. Far below the glass; swaying in the hills fuzzy with oak and pine and cottonwood; reflecting on the curling blue ribbons of the hundred streams which flow down from the white-capped mountain teeth; emblazoning the bright red chest of the bullfinch, and warming the zigzag scales of the adder splayed across a black stone; across all, the golden glowing sun of Theman sheds its light.

Akerat stands from amidst the green tassels of early summer rye. He tucks a weeding knife into the loop of his rope belt. He places his palm on the small of his back. He stretches. The same sun glimmers on the sweat of his brow. He breathes deep of the mountain air. He closes his eyes, face upturned, basking like a cat on a window sill.

Then Akerat wipes the sweat from his face. He sets a hand to his brow and watches the elk pasture. Bell and Evelin sit together at the fringe of the woods, out of the sun, beneath the branches of an evergreen. They sit complacent and comfortable, tossing their heads against the summer flies.

Akerat looks back to the porch. Szera sits in her wicker chair. She’s traded the small needle of animal bone for two long, thick ones of polished brown wood. Between them, blue yarn tangles itself into the shape of a blue sock. A matching red one sits finished in the old mother’s rocking lap.

Szera’s small squinting eyes look up to meet her son’s. “Find a surprise yam in the rye?” she asks.

“I had another thought just now, dear mother. The elks, important as they are for our milk and for pulling the plow, sit exposed. Out in the pasture. We should empty one of the rooms - Csilla’s is on the pasture side - and open a hole in the outer wall, and herd them inside at night.”

“Whaaat?” asks his mother. Her expression pinches, the yarn tensing as she pulls the needles unconsciously wide. She repeats, “Whaaat? Bring the elks inside?”

“Only until this invasion blows over. Once the king calls the danger passed, we’ll fix the wall and move Bell and…”

“I’ve never heard such nonsense. Animals bedding down under the same roof as gods and people. What’s the cylinder coming to?”

“We’ll keep them in a separate room. They won’t sleep beside us.” Akerat throws his hands up. “They’re your beasts anyway, old woman. You’re the one who stopped my butchering knife when they were young and meaty. We’ve got the matronly cows to take care of on your account.”

Szera shakes her grey curls, lips pressed in a thin line. “Beasts and Muira under one roof. Not something my mother would have let happen when she was elder. I can say that for certain. To live to see the day…”

Flash.

Pureblind magnesium dazzle. The world turns to white without a smell, without a sound, without an atom of movement. Instantly; the sky, the mountains, the hearth, Szera and Akerat; vanished. Without so much as a blink.

Szera and Akerat do blink. A second late. They keep blinking, both stunned speechless. By then the moment has passed. The sky had flashed. The world reacts. Every bird, in every tree, on every hill, rises. Feathered clouds fill the sky. Bell and Evelin jump, stamp uncertainly in the grass, stop. Szera and Akerat shake their heads free of daze. By then, the light has passed.

But in place of the sun’s golden glow, there’s only dim, ruddy light. Above, the yellow disc has turned crimson. Ragged.

Wounded.

Akerat, shaking his head, blinking, shouts. “Mother!”

“What-” Szera, shaking her head, blinking, stumbles. “What’s happened, my son?”

“I don’t know. Stay there… Get inside, get in the home. I’m coming.”

“That flash- why’s everything red?”

“Shut up! Go inside.” Akerat stumbles to the porch.

“Akerat! Such courtesy.”

“Be silent you old fool.” Akerat reaches the porch. He grabs his mother who has stood, clamping a hand over her mouth. She half-struggles as he drags her inside, glancing at the woodline. The elk are stamping nervously through the tall grass of the pasture; limned in crimson gloom.

Akerat closes the changed sky out with a slam of the heavy pine door.

A moment later, he cracks it open again. He watches the woods through the sliver. Szera’s pale Muira fingers grasp the edge of the door and try to pry it wider. Akerat holds it firm. Szera’s beetle-bright eyes, flinty and narrow, peek under Akerat’s elbow. She murmurs. “Never was spoken at so crudely. Injustice; graven upon my ear.”

“Hush, mother.” Akerat tries to press up against the crack. Szera, after a moment, returns with a chair, and stands looking over his head. Akerat goes on in a whisper. “I think it’s the invasion.”

“Speak always with the voice of courtesy.”

Akerat sighs. “You’re right. I’m sorry, dear mother. Now please be quiet.”

The two stand, mother peering over her son, watching the bloody forest. The only sound is their breathing. And the wind. The birds have settled. The elks hoof the grass anxiously, heads raised. The woods feel tense. Wary. Still, nothing outright stirs.

Szera whispers by her son’s ear. “There was some kind of flash. Like lightning.”

“I saw it too,” Akerat’s voice and shoulders are taut.

“And now… When I was your age, there was a star temple in Bruna, when my father Andras took us to visit. It was a big bubble in the center of town. It had all these windows, that made the world look painted in different colors. It’s like I’m looking through a red window, really dusty with smoke.”

It’s the same with me, dear woman.” Akerat cracks the door a little wider. Szera leans out on his shoulder. Akerat glances at the sky. “My eyes feel fine. A little stunned. I think- I think it’s the sun, mother.”

Szera follows Akerat’s eyes upward. “Sky’s spots.”

“No clouds. No grime on the glass, none that I see. But I look straight at the sun, and shed no tears. I need not even squint.”

“Never seen the sun like that, and I’ve seen a lot of days. It looks like a cut. Like it’s bleeding.”

“That it does.”

“Do you think it’s part of the invasion? Could those sleepless hurt the sun?”

“Restless, mother. I’d guess it’s them alright. They must have gotten way up there, outside the glass somehow. Or, maybe they hurt that Theman god? I don’t know…”

Szera gives a low whistle. Akerat doesn’t shush her. The old woman points a finger out of the door. “Look at Bell and Evelin, Aki. They’ve settled.”

“Yes. The light doesn’t seem dangerous.”

“I think we’re okay.”

Akerat scans the woods again. “I don’t see enemies. Still, let’s just watch for a while.”

“Whatever you say is best, my son.” The old woman climbs down from the chair. Akerat opens the door a little wider. Together, they stand side by side, gazes fixed on the new day.

Part 5

“Old woman-” thud “when you’re finished-” thud “bring me that pail-” thud.

Akerat sets the talon axe against the earthen wall of the house. He sucks cool air deep into his lungs. He steps back from the hole he’s chiseled so far - only a forearm wide, and reinforced still with bars of wood - in the round house wall. He turns and looks across the field.

Szera stares at him. She sits at a stool beside an Elk. She can’t see her son perfectly - not with her eyes. Only his outline against the wall, in the dark midday light. She cups a wrinkled hand to her ear. “What’s that you’re saying? I can hardly hear over that racket.”

Akerat sets his own alabaster fingers against his laugh lines, forming a cup. “The milk, mother.” gasp “Bring that pail here when you’re finished.

“The milk? Unstrained? Don’t throw your sense out in labor, my son. It would be warm and filmy.”

“Oh… I suppose it would.”

“You’d more than suppose if you ever milked these ladies. NOT that I’m bothered.”

“Okay, okay, you’re useful still. Pleased now?”

“I’m only trying to avoid being tossed out like some sere, moth-eaten tunic.” The old woman rises. She rubs her eyes, then her hips. “I’ll fetch you some from inside.”

“I’m fine.” Akerat waves her back as he sees his mother rising from her stool. “I can fetch my own drink. Tend to your elks.”

“No no no. You’re much too busy making holes in our house.” Szera rubs the soft brown fur of Bell. She sighs. “The girl’s hardly producing lately.”

“Isn’t it early in the season for her to dry up?”

“It’s been a different sort of season.”

“That it has, mother.”

The two stand. Silent. Staring. They look across the crimson field surrounding their hearth. They look upon the dark mahogany woods, and the rugged red landscape, and the pink-topped mountains, poking into a velvet sky.

Akerat runs his hands through the swaying grass beside the home wall. “At least the breeze still blows the same.”

Szera shivers. She clutches her tunic tighter around her shoulders. “It’s too chilly for late summer.”

“Set yourself and the gods a warm fire in the middenroom. We’ve wood to spare.”

“How long do you think the sun will take to heal?” asks Szera. She lifts her milk pail over the fence, unwraps the leather tie around the wattle gate, and starts back to the house.

“Not much longer, probably.” Akerat lifts his talon axe. He chips in regular strokes at the wall. The work warms his limbs. “Once the king and the army defeat the restless threat, the sun will surely be put back in good order. The king can’t enjoy this constant darkness much either, can he?”

“It wears me out. Having the light so low all the time.”

“Go inside and rest, mother. I’ll stop chipping here soon.”

“I might take a short lie in the hammock.” The old woman catches her breath as she leans on a gnarled porch beam. “This weariness makes no sense. You’d think I’d be stocked up on sleep.”

“I’d bet you a tenskein of golden rings that that’s why the restless wounded the sun. They want to wear us Muira out. Then, they attack.”

“Maybe.” Szera sets the pail on the porch. She rubs her arms. She watches the wild grass around the house, and the tall rye of the crop field, sway. “Have you noticed the grass?”

Akerat cranes his neck around the home’s curve to catch his mother’s eye. “It’s a bit brown.”

“I mean how tall it’s got. It tickles my neck in spots.”

“There’s no need to gripe, dear old woman. I’ll take the scythe out first thing tomorrow.”

“I don’t mean that, my son. The paths are fine. It just seems taller in the pasture now. Taller than it ever was in other summers.”

Akerat shrugs. He waits to catch his mother’s eye, then puts on a strained smile. “Maybe it misses the sun too.”

Szera shakes her head. “Don’t chide. It’s tall, and brown, and coming in early. But on the rye, there’s not a flake of grain. Ill omens under an ill sun.”

With a blow, Akerat plants the talon axe in the wall of earth. He walks through the grass that reaches his own chest. He steps onto the porch. He places a hand on his mother’s shoulder; she squeezes it. Akerat says, “Cheer up, mother. It is only a seasoning.”

“The king will set it right?” she asks, still looking at the scene with small and weary eyes.

“Those restless dropped like flies at the end of the last war. Any day now, the royal army will set us right as sunshine.”

Part 6

Winter.

The shape that is Akerat stumbles into the dark within the earthen home. The two elks beside the straw pile start toward the opening. Szera, standing beside it, stops them. She quickly pushes a barrier of wooden boards upholstered with fur across the opening. She shuts out the pinkly-glowing snowscape. The yellow multicandle light casts shadow clouds on the inside wall from the breath of the two elks.

Akerat’s shape stumbles to the floor. The firewood bundle it carried spills across a polished earth floor - not so polished now, marred as it is by straw and hoofprints. A lead-lined blanket slips from the shape’s shoulders, revealing Akerat beneath. He coughs. Flecks of bright blood scatter from his lips.

Szera sets a hand on her son’s shoulder for support. She sinks to her knees with a wince. In her other hand she holds a cup of steaming purple liquid. At a pause in his coughing she holds it to his mouth, and orders him, “Drink. Melyna.” Akerat burns his tongue on the tea. His face and balding head lose their chalky pallor almost at once; reverting to a healthy alabaster hue. His mother chides. “I warned you. Too much time in the snow, and thirty lead blankets won’t keep the poison off your skin.”

Akerat coughs once more. He takes another sip. He breathes deeply. “That’s what melyna’s for, dear old woman.”

Szera presses her lips thin. “Your great grandmother died from snow poisoning. It’s a risk best untaken.”

“That’s the last of the firewood. We needn’t emerge again till the spring thaw.”

“I hope not.” Szera squeezes her son’s shoulder. “Winter’s reaping early this year.”

Akerat rises to his knees, wiping his lips. “It’s good I felled that old grandfather pine by the sled shed. Those restless won’t find us frozen stiff and helpless if they try a winter siege.”

“Earliest winter I’ve ever seen,” Szera goes on. She twists at one of her strands of grey hair. She watches her son. “Summer’s hardly over, and we’ve had nary a grain from our rye.”

“Mother.” Akerat reaches up and holds the hand she has upon his shoulder, “We have food enough for winter, and spring, and forty dry bales for Bell and Evelin. Sky’s spots! We even have a few albuma eggs. And wine. The elks are here with us. It won’t be just you and me glaring at each other over the middenroom flame all winter. We were warned ahead of time, and we readied our hearth for a siege. Let it be a siege of restless or a siege of snow.”

“But-” his mother begins to interject.

“And if all that were not enough, you and I are blessed by birth to our household gods. We’re Muira: sons and daughters of suffering. Our gods crossed a sea and made hearths from a monster-land. Our people know endurance.” Akerat stands; a tired old man, still taller and straighter than his bent mother. “Cheer up, old mother. No wound bleeds forever. The sun will heal; the snow will melt; grain will rise again.”

Szera releases breath through her nose. She sets her head against her son’s shoulder. “I wonder if the whole cylinder’s sick like this. Pining over the sun.”

Akerat chuckles. “I can’t think the sun’s ceased shining on our tiny hearth alone.”

“Your sons, my grandsons…”

“Those boys are probably entrenched in some border dugout at this very minute. They’ll be getting fat on soldiers’ stew.”

“I wish we’d seen them before winter.”

“We’ll see them after. And now, dear old woman, skin and bones as you feel, we’ll do as my sons do. It’s time you yourself had a bit of meat and stew.”

“I’m eating plenty,” she protests as Akerat leads them from the elk room. “We must take care with our stores, and I’m no stag needing fattened.”

“How brave. As your hearth elder I commend you. And also, order you to eat.”

Outside, the pink snow falls.

Part 7

“Mother?” Akerat’s voice. A hollow knocking on the wall. A wool curtain slides aside. The middenroom fire outlines Akerat. His eyes shine alone in the dark pale of his face.

He calls again. “Mother?”

A cold room’s silence.

An agonizing pause.

Akerat forces himself to step forward.

“I’m… here…” sounds weakly from the dark.

Breath fogs out from Akerat’s face as he sighs. “It’s morning mother. The fire’s on.”

“Yes… I thought I heard a crackle.”

“You’ve slept a day and a night, dear old woman.” Akerat steps forward. There is a thud and squeal as he bangs a hip on a round sewing-table. He says nothing. His shadow swoops beside the bedroll where he knows his mother lies. “Wouldn’t you like to spend time with the elks today? Or chatter with the gods?”

“I would. I just couldn’t stand up this morning, my son.”

“That’s- That’s nothing, my dear old mother. You’ve been over-active with your knitting and rocking and worrying all winter. Never mind all that now. Let me lift your arm around my shoulder.”

“Alright.”

Akerat sets his mother’s skinny limb along his back. He lifts her. Old as he is, tired as he is, Szera is light in his arms. He lifts her and her blanket up, and carries her from the dark bedroom.

The son sets his mother gently in the wicker rocking chair, in the hearth middenroom. He arranges her blanket. The fire casts shadows from the sack cloth dolls arranged around their middenroom’s stone pool. The light falls like wet parchment on the lined, gaunt skin of the two Muira; mother and son.

“You sit here with the gods.” Akerat starts toward the mealroom. “A glass of hot sap water, and a bowl of hot rye stew - those will set you right.”

“My son.” Szera stops him with a raised, withered hand under her blanket. “Stay a while. Sit beside me and the household god.”

“You need to eat. I’ll be right-”

“Stay. Please. Hear what the voice inside me has to say.”

Akerat hesitates. He returns to the rocker. He kneels beside his mother. “Is there pain in you?”

Szera gives her son a wry glance. “I’ve lived over a hundred winters, boy.”

“Pain out of the ordinary then?”

“I’m merely weary. No, I wish to give you some good sense. Tell me - I’ve not prepared our food for many days - how much dry rye grain is left unground in the hanging sacks of our pantry?”

“Enough for a fine stew to fill your limbs with vigor, old woman.”

“An elder speaks fairly with his hearthmates, my son. Lie not for the sake of smiles.”

“A little more than a sack left of rye.”

“And no jerky, or albuma, or wine to wash it with, I gather,” The old mother nods to herself. “Tell me also - for I’ve put no logs in the stone basin for many days - how does the stack of firewood stand?”

“We have melyna enough for me to take the axe out and-”

“The truth.”

Akerat stares into the low flame before them. “Our stack sits somewhat higher than my ankle.”

“I did expect that as well. The snow is still thick upon the ground? The sun, still wounded?”

“Yes. Yes. Mother, why do you dwell on these things? I thought you wished to advise me?”

“So I do, my son. Here is what I have to say. Firstly, your firewood will not last the winter.”

“The winter cannot go on forever. It can’t.”

“No,” his mother muses in a weak, distant voice. “I don’t think it can. We Muira did not survive the exodus to die out now. We’re too hardy a folk.” She catches a ragged breath. “Nevertheless, your firewood will not last, I don’t feel. You must use it sparingly. When it is exhausted, don’t hesitate to burn whatever shall burn. Suffer what chill you can, but don’t let yourself freeze.”

“That is obvious. Unlikely as it may be, if the winter outlasts our firewood, I’ll burn old crates. Or beds. Or other furnishings of wood. I’ll burn what we must to survive.”

“I know it’s obvious to you, my son. You’re a good man, and a wise elder. Still, I must give voice to these words… About your food. But, tell me first, are Bell and Evelin alive? Their skin hung loose when I saw them last.”

“Your elks are alive, old woman.”

“I can’t see the gated door. It’s dark and indistinct. Are they listening?”

“No. They’re resting in the straw. They miss the outside.”

“Good. Then listen close to what I whisper. If you run out of food, and there is no other option, you must slit both their necks-” Akerat begins to interrupt. “Just listen, my boy. You must slit both their necks, butcher those two faithful cows, and survive off what little meat they give. I grant you my blessing in this.”

“It will not come to that.” her son answers firmly.

“It might. Give me your word, as elder, that you will eat those two faithful girls before you yourself starve. Give it, or I’ll be an evil god about your shoulders when my spirit joins the wind. I won’t have you sparing those animals for foolish sentiment.”

Akerat kneels beside his mother’s chair. She watches him - watches his shape - through her sunken, grey eyes. Finally, he says, “My word; as elder of hearth Erdo.”

“You’re the elder,” she agrees in her quiet voice. “By you must the hearth survive. You must live; to pass the eldership to your sons on their return. You must live; to tend the household gods. Tell me what you know; which are the smallbones?”

“The fingers. The-” Akerat swallows, “toes. The spine. The jaw.”

“Good. When I am gone-”

“Please…”

“When I am gone,” Szera rasps on, “don’t burn me at once. Save your wood. Wrap me in canvas, and set me out where winter will hold me in his safe, cold hands. In the meantime pick out and sew some good, white cloth for my sack. I won’t stand to be an ugly god. Do you understand, my dear son?”

“I understand, dear old mother.”

“Then I am at peace.” Szera sinks into her rocker, beneath her blanket. The little animation leaves her form and face. The firelight twinkles in her eye. “You will have much to do when summer comes. And it will come, I’m sure of it. You must put our hearth in order.”

“I will.” Akerat squeezes her shoulder. He rises. “I’ll make that stew now.”

“No.” The denial is quiet this time. “Don’t waste… the time… ”

Akerat sags back down. His hand tightens on his mother’s shoulder. “Oh mother…”

“What good can come of grief… my son? Just stay. We’ll spend time with our spirits.”

Akerat swallows. “Anything you like.”

“The household gods are present, you know. Keep the bones; keep the spirit. Always… at your side…”

“Blessed gods,” Akerat agrees, “flesh, bone, spirit.”

Part 8

From the tangle of needles and branches, sparkling with dew in the bloody light of the wounded sun, two Muira emerge into the clearing. The taller of the two throws back the wetted hood of his cloak. His face is angular; his eyes, yellow and sharp. He smooths his black beard with a hand down his face. He sniffs the air. “The air of spring,” he says in a man’s voice. “Neither sight nor smell of smoke. It’s the same air as the rest of the thawing woods.”

The other man, shorter, pushes back his own cowl. His cheeks are clean, but with the same yellow eyes and strong jaw. He points ahead, “No signs of looters.”

“The home looks undamaged.” The taller one steps forward.

His companion stops him with a hand. “Careful brother. Snow there, hidden in the tall grass. Still swamped with radiation, no doubt.”

His brother nods. He scans the clearing. “There. The woods come up close to the house. The terrain beneath will be clear.”

The two circle the edge of the clearing; moving half under the shadow of the brown-needled branches, half under the shadow of the flushed sun. They step over a rundown wattle fence. They come to where the woods draw near the round earthen wall of the home.

The taller bearded brother nods at the wall. “A hole. The fence has been extended to it.”

“It’s covered by something on the inside,” says the other. “Deliberate. Not damage from the elements.”

By now they’ve reached the wall, and circled to the edge of the porch. The taller one says, “Many hearths have seen their line ended, brother. Even Bruna, provisioned as it was, saw its share of death. Three season of endless snow and-”

“Shhh.” The younger brother glances at the heavy pine door. “I heard a noise. Hello?” he calls out in a louder tone. “Is there an elder of this hearth?”

The other says, “We are two sons. We called Hearth Erdo home in our youth.”

The home is silent. The pines whisper in the breeze.

Then the door opens.