This is the way they revere the dead. They remember what they offered the world, and what everybody else has to do to fill the gap. There are no prayers here, no thoughts of an afterlife. The reward for a good life is the living of it.
Matis is at the centre of the long table, surrounded by his oldest friends. They’re laughing and reminiscing, knowing their own days are nearly at an end, too. Everybody dies on their sixtieth birthday, whether they’re healthy or not. They enjoy their funeral, then go to sleep as normal. At some point in the night, their hearts simply stop beating. After a lifetime of service, dying painlessly in their beds is the least I can give them.
Emory walks out through the iron gate in the high wall surrounding the village, onto the concrete pier, leaving the sounds of celebration behind.
Tears are rolling down her cheeks, but she doesn’t want anybody to see her being selfish. Unlike many of his generation, her grandfather actually made it to sixty. He’s spent every day in service to the village and will pass away without regret.
Knowing when he’s going to die has afforded him the luxury of long goodbyes. For the last week, he’s seen everybody he wants to see. Everybody he cares for knows how he feels about them, and he – in turn – is full of their love. There is nothing left unsaid.
Emory can only hope to die as fulfilled, but grief presses against her chest, tearing at her heart.
Her mother died from a fever when she was twelve, and her father seemed to drift away with her. Her grandmother was long dead, so it was Matis who read Emory stories at night and gave her jobs to do during the day; mindless, thankless things to keep her from dwelling on the pain of her lost family.
Even now the clink of his chisel hitting stone brings her comfort, and the idea that she won’t hear that sound again is unbearable.
From the pebbled bay to her left, she catches a rhythmic hammering. It’s much too dark to see what’s causing it, but she has a fairly good idea.
Moving carefully, she follows the tapping around four moored boats, where she finds Seth repairing the hull of the Broad Bottom Packet by the light of a small lantern. The tide is in, and the waves are nipping playfully at his heels. Alerted by the crunching pebbles, he casts her a quick annoyed glance.
He has a heavy brow above a crooked nose and a square jaw that clicks when he eats. Beneath his broad shoulders are two thick arms covered in whorls of dark hair and patches of grease. They were powerful once, but the muscles have softened and the empty flesh is starting to sag.
Compared to everybody else in the village, there’s the air of a first attempt about Seth, like nature thumbed a couple of eyes into the clay, then tossed him aside as a bad job.
‘You’re working?’ she says, surprised.
She came here expecting to find him hobbled by the same grief as herself, but she now realises that was idiotic. Every villager’s life is an act of service. They care for each other before themselves, and her father is devout to that ideal. He won’t cry until he’s filled every pothole, patched every roof, harvested every vegetable and loaded the furnace that will cremate his father. By his estimation, sadness is just selfishness that people pity rather than scorn.
‘She’s got a hole in her,’ he says, resuming his hammering.
‘You don’t want to see Matis?’
‘We talked this morning,’ he says gruffly.
‘He’s your dad.’
‘That’s why we talked this morning,’ he repeats, lining up another nail.
Emory bites her lip, overcome by the usual exhaustion. Every conversation with her father is like this. He’s a boulder you have to keep rolling uphill.
‘Niema offered me a job today.’
‘She told me,’ he replies, pounding the nail into the wood. ‘You should accept it. It’s a huge honour, and you’ve tried everything else. It’s about time you found a way to properly serve the village.’
She accepts the reprimand silently, watching the foamy water lap against the pebbles. The sea’s pitch black at this hour, the bay lost to the darkness. She’s half tempted to go for a swim, but it’s too close to curfew. She settles for walking a few steps into the surf, letting it wash her sandalled feet. They’re always filthy by the end of the day.
‘Something’s upsetting Niema,’ she says, trying to change the subject. ‘Do you know what it is? She told me she has an experiment to run, but I couldn’t get anything else out of her. It sounds important.’
‘No idea,’ he replies, lining up another nail. ‘I noticed she was preoccupied, but she didn’t mention anything.’
‘Did you ask her about it?’
‘That’s not my place.’
‘I wish she’d let us help her.’
‘That’s like wishing you could take the sun’s weight for a day.’ Another nail is driven into the wood. ‘Niema’s concerns dwarf us. If she has need of help she’ll ask one of the elders. We need to keep our focus on the things we can control.’
He pauses meaningfully, coming onto the subject that’s been bothering him. ‘How’s Clara?’
Emory’s daughter was recently chosen to become one of Thea’s apprentices, and she’s been exploring the island for the last three weeks as part of her training. It’s a huge honour, as she was one of only two people who made it through the trials. She’s now receiving an advanced education in mathematics, engineering, biology and chemistry, learning things far beyond the understanding of most villagers.
‘I’ve sent some messages through Abi, but she’s not replied to any of them,’ says Emory, mesmerised by the dark ocean. ‘I think she’s still angry.’
Seth’s hammer wavers in the air, then thuds into a nail. He’s tense, the cords in his neck flaring.
‘You might as well get it off your chest,’ says Emory tersely, recognising this mood.
‘I’m fine,’ he grunts.
‘Just say it, Dad,’ she insists. ‘You’ll feel better after you’ve shouted a bit.’
‘It’s every child’s dream to become one of Thea’s apprentices,’ he says, through gritted teeth. ‘Can’t you be happy for Clara? Can’t you pretend? You didn’t even go to her leaving dinner.’
‘I couldn’t celebrate something I never wanted for her,’ says Emory, wiping droplets of seawater off her forearm.
Once her new apprentices are fully trained, Thea will put them to work running experiments in her lab and searching the island for promising technology to salvage. It’s a lifetime position, but most of her apprentices don’t survive a decade. It’s dangerous work and Emory’s already lost a husband and her mother to the apprentices. She tried everything to keep her daughter from applying, much to Seth’s disgust.
‘That dinner was the happiest day of Clara’s life,’ he says, the furnace starting to grow hot. ‘I haven’t seen her smile so much since her father died. She wanted her mother there to celebrate with her, and you were off sulking.’
‘I wasn’t sulking.’
‘Then what was it? You’re the only person who’s ever turned down the chance to become an apprentice. You couldn’t expect Clara to do the same.’
‘I didn’t turn it down,’ says Emory, sliding into the well-worn groove of an old argument. ‘I tried it and didn’t like it. You know what that life is: traipsing across the island, poking around ruins, messing with old machines we barely understand. How many of Thea’s apprentices get injured? How many are still alive?’
‘So it was cowardice?’ he spits bitterly.
‘It was good sense,’ she shoots back. ‘I noticed that Thea is never the one standing by the machines when they explode.’