The Sky Warden and the Sun

by Sean Williams

  Caught up in her thoughts, she missed a sentence or two, and she surprised herself by being annoyed when she realised it.

  “His wife lay on the family bed,” Brokate was saying, “cold and still. His son, barely old enough to grow a beard, huddled in a ball in one corner of the room, while his sister, older but smaller, lay spreadeagled on her stomach as though dropped from a great height. They were stiff but not yet beginning to smell. A red dust like fine sand or pollen lay across their skin.

  “The baker ran from the room in horror. It was too terrible: it couldn’t be true. But it was the same in every home he visited: families lay dead in their beds or nearby, coated in the crimson ash. Some had died sleeping, others looked as though they had woken long enough to cry out in pain, then expired. And it wasn’t just the people: the blacksmith, the mayor, the butcher, the tailor and the others. The livestock had succumbed too. All through the village nothing moved. No birds sang. No insects crawled or flew to inspect the dead. Nothing but himself, the baker, had survived.

  “He spent all day trying to work out what had happened. Had the red dust killed them, or was it just a residue left behind by some terrible poison? Whatever was behind the mysterious deaths, it must have struck everywhere at once, for nowhere was there a sign of disturbance; no one had alerted family members or neighbours. They seemed to have died in their sleep or shortly after waking. The red ash remained a mystery no matter how hard he searched. All he could tell for certain—the unimaginative, unremarkable baker—was that he was alone. He had been spared purely because he hadn’t been there.

  “Crying silently he walked the empty streets where he had once strolled with his family, feeling the hands of children in his, the warmth of his wife’s love buoying him upward. He lost track of time. He sat, stunned, in the town’s only bar, drinking on his own. The fact that everyone was dead only sank in at the thought that he could leap the counter and take anything he wanted. He didn’t have to pay because there was no one left to care. They were all gone.

  “Night fell. The sun set over the deserted town and no lights came on to greet the stars. The rows of windows were cold and empty. Doors no longer offered protection from the night; instead they locked in a darkness that the baker was reluctant to see or even think of. The baker was alone in a town of the dead. How long, the baker wondered, until the stench drove him away? Or the killer, the source of the red ash, returned? Perhaps, he thought, if the killer did return to correct its mistake, to collect the one who had slipped through its net, that would solve his problems.

  “And at that precise moment,” Brokate said, her voice deepening, “the baker heard footsteps coming up the street into the heart of town. Hard shoes clunked on the cobbles: heavy shoes and a heavy walker, slow and measured. Whoever was out that night had no fear of the fate that had befallen the village.

  “Terrified, the baker ducked behind the counter of the bar and hid. The footsteps grew nearer, as clear as ice in the empty night, along the road, across the pavement, and into the bar.

  “‘Come out,’ said a voice which he felt in his heart and gut, rather than heard with his ears. ‘Come out of hiding and see my face.’

  “Quivering, the baker rose to his feet and faced the visitor. He had expected a man; the owner of such hard shoes and heavy stride simply had to be male. But what he saw was no person at all.

  “‘I am Death,’ said the figure before him. The baker received a confused impression of many things at once: leathery bat wings; a bright red insect carapace; wide-spaced spider eyes; long, black limbs with joints higher than his head. The creature’s appearance was constantly shifting, accompanied by the sound of moth’s wings rustling, dead leaves falling, ghosts whispering.

  “‘H-have you come to take me?’ the baker asked it.

  “‘You called me,’ it said. ‘Is that what you want me to do?’

  “The baker didn’t realise that Death could be summoned simply by thinking about it, and he was far from certain that Death was what he actually wanted. By way of answering the question, he stammered out as good an explanation of what had happened as he could manage under the circumstances: he had been called away the previous night and when he returned everyone had been dead. He was the only one left alive. Perhaps there had been a mistake, and Death could correct it.

  “The apparition watched him closely through its many eyes. ‘Do you think you should have died with your family?’ it asked.

  “The baker didn’t honestly know. ‘Can you tell me what happened to them?’ he asked.

  “‘They stopped living,’ Death said.

  “‘But why?’

  “‘I don’t know. All I can do is show them to you.’

  “The baker thought of the bodies decomposing in the rooms behind the bakery. ‘I don’t want to see them as they are.’

  “‘As they have always been, then,’ said Death, and with that, what little light there remained in the world drained away around them, and darkness closed in.”

  Brokate paused to take a sip of water, and Sal took the opportunity to compare versions again.

  “The red dust is different. I heard that they died in their sleep, with their eyes shut and mouths open. The only odd thing was a black smudge on their foreheads, as though someone had marked them with charcoal.”

  “It doesn’t surprise me,” Brokate said. “These stories are told and retold many times, and every teller adds something of his or her own culture in the process. As long as the essential details remain the same, it doesn’t matter. The charcoal marking is an interesting one, though. Where I come from, in Kourak, there was a religious sect near our village. If you were favoured by them, they would mark you like that at certain times of the year.”

  “Why?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.” She twitched the reins leading to the camels, and settled more comfortably in her seat. “Where were we? Oh, yes. Death took the baker to the other side of life, where there exists a realm living humans can only rarely visit. It is a shadow world, but not in the sense of darkness and absence of light. Death is a shadow cast by life, not the absence of life. When you take away all that a person is, all that remains is what they have become.

  “The simple baker found much to puzzle him there. The first thing he saw was a replica of the village and its inhabitants, all seeming as solid as ever. The blacksmith stood by his bellows, staring at the baker as he walked past. The mayor scowled at him. The butcher’s silver blade flashed onto an empty chopping block while the tailor’s needle swooped and dove into black, leathery fabric. None of them said a word.

  “Death walked beside him, its heavy steps the only sound in the dull world. No one acknowledged it, the baker noticed; maybe, he thought, they couldn’t see it. Death led the baker along the street to his house and up the short flight of steps. On the threshold, he heard the sounds of an argument. His wife and children were bickering, as usual.

  “They fell silent when he walked into the kitchen, the feathery whisper of Death at his heels. His wife, son and daughter stared at him for a timeless moment.

  “‘Franic,’ he began, but his son spun angrily on his heel and walked out.

  “He tried again. ‘Tulpil—’ but his daughter crossed the room in two strides and slapped him across the face, then also left the room.

  “That left only: ‘Elsa?’

  “‘You weren’t with us when we needed you,’ his wife said, glaring.

  “He couldn’t meet her stare. ‘Elsa, what happened to you? Do you know?’

  “‘We died, of course!’

  “‘Do you know what did it?’

  “For a moment, her anger faded. Her eyes took on a faraway look. ‘I dreamed of a cloud. A red cloud. It rolled down the hill and engulfed the town. It buried us. Everything went dark. I woke up here.’ She came back to herself. ‘And you weren’t here, damn you. You weren’t here.’

  “‘I came back and found you’…he began.

  “‘I don’t care what you
did, you fool,’ she broke in. ‘You’ve never been any good when it counted. You’re weak-willed, useless. It should be you that died, not us.’ She turned her back on him and walked out, spurning him as his children had.

  “When she was gone, the baker turned to Death and said that he had seen enough. He was crying. He hadn’t expected tears in the realm of Death. He had thought that they would be left behind, along with cruelty, disdain and scorn.

  “Death raised an arm and the grey of the shadow-world faded. ‘Is it true?’ Death asked him, before taking him back to the real world.

  “‘Which part?’

  “‘That you should have died instead of them,’ Death said, ‘not with them.’

  “‘I don’t know. What difference does it make now?’

  “‘I have the power to change some things,’ said the apparition. ‘If you would die to return them to life, I can make it so.’

  “The baker looked at Death in surprise. It didn’t seem possible that he would be able to change places with his family—but, then, none of what had happened to him seemed possible. Why not this, too?

  “But the baker remembered the shadow-realm version of his family’s kitchen. It was empty. The hearth was grey and cold; there was no food in the larder and no water in the sink. It was a dead place.

  “‘Take me home,’ the baker said, and Death did just that.”

  Brokate paused again, but this time Sal didn’t interrupt. Shilly was glad for that. A nagging uncertainty had crept into the tale; there was more underlying it than she had at first suspected. In simpler tales, the baker would gladly have given his life to bring back his loved ones.

  “The apparition didn’t leave the baker after that as he had thought it might,” Brokate went on. “It hovered in a corner while he tried to get things in order. He had to eat, or he might as well let Death take him. He had to sleep. Deep down he knew that, even when bones shift or break, the flesh persists. It may be lame or scarred, but it heals. And sometimes it heals stronger than before.

  “Besides, he had graves to dig. Had there been insects left in the wake of the red dust, the bodies of his fellow villagers would have made meals for numerous tiny mouths; instead they just sagged, wilted, putrefied. The dust didn’t hurt him when he moved them. On the beds, on the floors and in the hallways, red outlines revealed where they had fallen and died. From a population of over one hundred, that would soon be all that remained of them.

  “On the third morning after the village had died, when his job was only half-done, a pale, thin hand on his shoulder shook him awake from a deep sleep.

  “‘Bern,’ a voice said into his ear, for that was his name. ‘Bern, wake up. Wake up!’

  “He jerked upright with such force that he startled the person who had been shaking him. She was a young woman dressed in a farmworker’s shift. Her hair was blonde and long, and her eyes were grey-blue, like old ice. She was looking at him with concern, and he didn’t know how to reassure her.

  “‘Oh, Bern,’ she said, ‘you had me worried. I thought you were dead, too.’

  “‘You’ve seen them?’ he asked her.

  “She screwed up her nose. ‘I can smell them. What happened?’

  “‘I don’t know.’ His eyes wandered to the stairwell and found the shifting, eerie form of Death watching closely from under the stairs. ‘Monca, you shouldn’t be here.’

  “‘Da asked me to come,’ she said. ‘He’s heard nothing from Dedrick since Wednesday, and they were supposed to meet. He sent me to see what was wrong.’ Her words faltered.

  “‘Did you kill them?’ she asked.

  “‘No,’ he said. ‘Do you really think I’d do that?’

  “She flushed. ‘The last time I saw you, you said they were angry with you.’

  “‘Deservedly so, Monca. I didn’t hate them for it.’

  “‘People have killed for lesser things than hate, Bern.’

  “‘Not me,’ he said, suddenly hearing exactly what people would say when word spread of the catastrophe. Everyone in La Menz had died except Bern the Baker, the one sowing his oats with the pretty farm girl from the neighbouring village. The one who would abandon his wife and children, given half a chance. The one who deserved it most. That it was partly true didn’t make it any easier to bear.

  “‘I didn’t do it,’ he reiterated with as much force as he could muster, hearing only hollowness in his voice. He was empty, unable to raise enough passion even to defend his innocence.

  “‘I believe you, Bern, my love.’ She leant closer and tried to embrace him, but he pushed her away and stood up.

  “‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Everything is wrong. I should have been here, with them, when it happened.’

  “‘With that bitch and those two brats?’ Her temper flared as it only did when he talked about his family. ‘You didn’t leave them: they all but cast you out. You were lucky you weren’t here when it happened. Now you’re free. You can do whatever you want. We can be together.’

  “‘It’s not that simple, Monca,’ he said. ‘There are things I have to do. I have responsibilities—’

  “‘To the dead?’ she interrupted.

  “‘To myself,’ he said. His heart ached to see her looking so upset. Before, when his family had been alive, he had blamed them for her pain. Now he wasn’t so sure. Perhaps he would never be able to give her what she needed.

  “‘I love you, Bern,’ she said.

  He couldn’t answer. Tears filled his eyes, the memories of walking together as a family through the streets of his village coming to him again. The children’s hands had been much smaller than his, then, and his wife’s love had faded since. ‘All things change,’ he said. ‘All things die. We can’t fight that.’

  “He headed for the stairs.

  “‘Do you love me, Bern?’ Monca wanted to know. He didn’t have an answer for her. His simple heart ached from the confusion of his life. Once, he had loved his wife as much as he had thought, just days ago, that he loved Monca. He had loved his children, too. Somewhere along the way it had all gone wrong and he didn’t know how to make it right. He didn’t know who he loved. All he knew was how to make bread, and that was worthless in an empty village.

  “He walked up the stairs without looking back. Monca must have noted the smell issuing from the bedroom before she had woken him, for only Death followed him now.

  “‘Why are you still here?’ he asked the apparition.

  “‘I still await your decision,’ it said. ‘I note that you haven’t buried your family yet. Until that is done, nothing is binding.’

  “He nodded. The bodies of his wife and two children lay where they had fallen. He had resolved to deal with them last of all, even if they came apart in his hands. Not until his mind and heart were certain that he was making the right decision would he condemn them to the grave.

  “‘I feel guilty,’ he said. ‘I wanted to leave them, and I did, that night, to see Monca. They died while I was gone. But they hadn’t really wanted me there; they just wanted security. I gave them that, at least, and took my own needs elsewhere. I came back to them to ease my conscience, not my heart.’

  “Death said nothing.

  “‘They died,’ he went on, ‘and at first I was glad I wasn’t with them.’ It felt good to confess the dark secret that lurked in his heart, where Monca had been unable to free it. ‘I was glad to be alive. But can I really live like this, feeling guilty for my good fortune? Monca doesn’t know what it is like to have had a family and lost them, to death or to anything else. Monca is young. She doesn’t deserve this—complication.’ He felt terribly sad, thinking of the woman waiting for him below, wondering what he was doing.

  “Death watched him from a point near the doorway, whispering to itself. The baker saw his own face staring back at him, momentarily, from the chaos of body parts and textures. It frightened him to see it, but it excited him, too. A vacancy opened in his chest, as though, just for a moment, he was falling. There was o
ne simple answer to his confusion, and he was, after all, a simple man.

  “It was time to act.

  “‘You’ll take me, and bring them back?’

  “‘If you have decided,’ said Death, ‘it will be so.’

  “‘And I’ll be able to watch them?’

  “‘If you want to badly enough.’

  “‘I think I will,’ he said.

  “Death moved closer, until it was looming over him. The smell of old bird wings and sun bleached rabbit bones buried him in musty darkness.

  “And it was done.”

  The baker’s decision took Shilly completely by surprise—although it was the one she had thought he should make, originally. This wasn’t the way such tales normally worked. Simple men didn’t have affairs—and if they did, if they loved another more than someone else, surely they would stay with their lover, not sacrifice themselves and lose their chance to find happiness. Why would he give up everything for a family who had died through no fault of his own? A living love had to be better than dead grief.

  It didn’t make sense to her. What was the baker seeing that she wasn’t?

  Brokate continued:

  “The baker found his afterlife mercifully uncomplicated. He moved into the pale echo of his old home, where the cupboards were bare and the air was dry, and learned how to live in the land of the dead. With no need to eat or drink, he found himself, for the first time in his life, with plenty of time to think.

  “His family, meanwhile, rejoined the living. What they did, at first, he didn’t know. It took him some weeks to get the knack of seeing through the death-realm to the land of light and life. Even then, it was ghostly and faint, like pictures on gauze held up to the sun. But it was clear enough—too clear, at times.