Remember: a cold, plague-scarred town high on a rocky coast. It was once a town of riches, a town of commerce. Now the streets are run by rats, the crows pick at the organs of the unburied dead, and the sickly-sweet scent of rotting flesh mingles in a delicate dance with the salty hot tears of the survivors. For there are survivors, even in this gods-forsaken place. And, like the first sprouts which follow a blazing inferno, they grow, they green, they twist around in a quest for sunlight. And something resembling life returns.
There was once, in this town, a Smith and his family. The family are now dead. The Smith is not. (He now sings as he works, lost in the mysteries of growth. Remember: these were once with the world.) But there are other survivors, besides…
A man walks up a hill, to see a face. Once, it was the face which stood three heads over his sister. It smiled to him, smiled to the children. But those versed in the quiet details of people, who see the things which people they think they hide, knew that this face never saw the man nor even the children. It smiled, it sparkled, it bent and shone and flowed only in the direction of that little women, the mother of its children, the one to tend the garden, a safe, soft harbor in a storm-tossed life.
That wife, mother, sister? She now rots under the dying garden. Her skull shows through, its flesh taken by worms and flies. Her only solace, perhaps, is that her children rot with her. Perhaps, as their lips turn to stench and dirt, they smile. After all, their teeth are all that show.
The man who climbs the hill does not smile at this thought. His sister’s white teeth, bare to the earth that encloses them, are a thing of sadness. His parents, their parents, were long gone before the plague. He alone bears the mantle of the family memory now. So he goes to see the Smith, to remind himself of their names and their meanings. To greedily gulp of the Past.
He walks through the doorway to find an unfamiliar man. The quiet soul, the happy one who worked at the forge in a blithe rhythm of sparks and pounded iron, hums an ominous melody as he idly paces. A bag of possessions, the small hoard of a traveller bound tight to the road and the quest of a dream’s fulfilment, lies loose upon the table of the home.
The dead wife’s brother hangs at the doorway, caught on memory’s vicious snag. He asks, quietly, walking in, about the day. The only answer is the hum continued. The smith carries the tune to another low room, returning with some necessity for the table’s sack. Only then does he look to the eyes of the living reminder before him. A low greeting passes between the two men, but only one greets with his eyes. The Smith’s are elsewhere, adrift in the waves of a god’s call.
The newcomer knows what the bag is, but refuses to believe. He sweetens little nothings to try to clear his palate. He asks of the weather, of the crumbs left by the plague’s greedy feast. The Smith is tight lipped, still dazed, and answers in brief if at all. Waves of hot crash on a shore of sharp monosyllables. All the while the bag grows fuller: a few clothes, the tools of a blacksmith, some grain and dried fish. A collection for travel.
The newcomer is confused, pained, drawn further and further into despair. The Smith now brings water from the well, and sets his sights squarely on the hearth still burning. The forge, of course, is long cold and dark. This is too much for the brother to bear.
“Why do you do this? What in the name of the gods has changed? I am a brother, your last link to this world! Would you abandon me so?”
The Smith looms, a tower of a man, but stops. Water splashes on the kitchen floor. His humming stops, and for a moment there is silence.
“I have no choice in this. I am a man, not a god.”
His voice booms in the small room. He seems to grow a head taller. The brother nearly staggers, but in longing stands firm.
“Even such a man is not forced to forget.”
The Smith, too, is unmoved.
“What could you possibly know of these things?”
He surges, implacable. The water hisses on the coals of the hearth, and he sets the bucket beside. The brother’s force wanes. He relents, injured at what he has provoked, and consigns himself to defeat. The Smith takes his pack in hand, and walks for the door. As he leaves, he speaks, low, over the drumbeats of his boots on the floorboards.
“This was her place, you know. Now it is yours.”
And with that he leaves.
The path to the harbor is long and winding. But the salt wind which tosses the smith’s hair is the same which twists the red-striped pennants of the waiting ships. It carries the scents of foreign lands, the dust of the whole world over. And its whine is a fine harmony to his basso hum. Blades of future promise rend the clouds of loss asunder. He is no longer a man, but a servant of god.
And this god, for now, is one skilled in the ways of chance and necessity. A ship, there in the harbor, waits to cast off for the far east. The captain knows that it lacks but one passenger before its prow points to distant Iphu. He does not know he knows, of course, but such is the way that cycle gods craft their works.
It is only as his boots find the planks of the pier that the panting brother catches him. He calls out, now desperate.
“Did you not love her? Us?”
The Smith walks onwards, a man enraptured.
“There is no one left!”
Still only footsteps.
“Why would you forget her!”
The footsteps slow, but only for the nearing gangplank. The brother lashes out, in the last way he can: he dashes in front of the Smith, slowing him just long enough to add a small weight to the traveler’s pack. It is a memory made real, a thing unburied. The woman, the wife, the corpse in the hill… it once hung around her neck. The brother stands aside, now, satisfied.
“For me, for my sake… Never go without that.”
The Smith begins to climb aboard. The crew, oblivious, continue with their tasks.
“You were to her as she was to you, and don’t forget that.”
The Smith is now aboard, but turns to face the brother ashore. The little man shouts again.
“If you’re going… If you’re going I’ll wait.”
The Smith is only a few feet away, and his response is low and clear.
“I am a servant, not a man.”
His eyes are steady as he speaks these words. But, for a moment, they break from their gaze to the horizon. Shaking, they alight on the brother. A blink. A single tear. But then, again seized by a power beyond, they center. The Smith turns, and leaves the rail.
It is only later, crammed in the depths of the hold between a barrel of ale and a stack of timber, that he thinks about the pain of departure. He realizes two things. First, he is not entirely consumed by the god’s song. But, second, that perhaps he is by his own. The dirge, dedicated to ages past and faces lost to earth and ash, sings free and clear in the ship’s belly. The sails fill, and the land shrinks. A Chord sounds, driven by the terrible dream of a man untied, and it rings out for Iphu.
