Finally, when Matt and I were alone among the remains of his disaster of a party, I started crying. “How could he do that? How could he even think it? She was probably this wonderful, beautiful, independent woman, and he destroyed—”
Matt had poured two glasses of champagne. He handed me one.
“Happy New Year, Kitty.” He pointed at the clock on the microwave: 12:03 a.m.
Crap. I missed it. I started crying harder.
Matt, my friend, hugged me. So once again, I didn’t get a New Year’s kiss. This year, I didn’t mind.
The Gravedigger of Konstan Spring
Genevieve Valentine
There was something more civilized about a town that could bury its dead, if they stayed dead, and so Folkvarder Gray put out the notice for a gravedigger.
John the gravedigger was the best in the Nyr Nord Territory. He dug them narrow and he dug them deep, and when he came to Konstan Spring he provided references from Nyr Odin, where he had been called in to exercise his craft after the second English War for the Territory.
Folkvarder Gray looked over the letters, and then he shook John’s hand and took the “Gravedigger Wanted” sign out of the window, and felt very satisfied.
The water in Konstan Spring was warm all year, and it ran clear and pure, and once you drank it all your cuts and aches and pains vanished from you as if they were caught up in the current.
The town was young (everything in that country was young) and did no great business. The land around the spring had to be worked to coax any crops from the dirt, and it was so far from the sea or the railroad or the Nations tribal gatherings that there was no profit in hotels or in trading.
The general store and the saloon, the chemist and the town lodge, the blacksmith and the whorehouse, tended to those who lived there; there was little other need. The folkvarder’s office, with its little jail cell, stayed empty. There was no trouble to be had; people only found Kostan Spring by accident, and often hurried through on their way to someplace greater.
All the same, some lonesome souls had found their way to Konstan Spring.
It was a town that suited painstaking people, and when the town gathered for meetings to decide if newcomers should be given the water, the votes were orderly, and there was hardly a raised voice in the lodge.
(Mrs. Domar was sometimes louder than most people cared for, but the town was loyal to its own—where else could someone go, who had tasted the water in Konstan Spring?—and no fuss was made about her.)
The only man to bring the water out of Konstan Spring had been Hosiah Frode, the old chemist. Two years back he had written “KONSTAN’S ALE—MIRACLE TONIC” on his wagon and taken three barrels, early one morning before Folkvarder Gray could stop him.
Everyone waited to see what would happen. No one said it, but they all worried—if the gunslingers and the gamblers and the ill-living folk got wind of Konstan’s Ale and came looking for the spring, the town might be overrun with greedy sorts, and they would never be rid of them.
It was a dark winter.
But Konstan Spring was a practical town, and even under the shadow of trouble, they all made do. Kit down at the whorehouse hired a few new girls all the way from Odal in case city men had finer tastes, and she taught Anni the blacksmith’s daughter how to cook sturdy food so she could work the kitchen when all the rich, sickly gentlemen came looking for the water.
But the water must not have been such good luck to Hosiah Frode, because he never came back, and no rush of travelers ever appeared.
Secretly, Folkvarder Gray suspected Frode had angered a higher power with his thieving, and been struck down by stronger hands than theirs—the water was a great gift, and Frode should have known better than to abuse it.
It was a shame, Gray thought; Frode was a liar and a thief, but he had been a fine chemist, and Gray respected a man who was able with his work.
Frode never returned.
By spring, the men in town had developed fine enough taste to call on the new whorehouse girls from Odal (Kit had chosen the very best), and Kit sent Anni the blacksmith’s daughter over to the chemist’s.
No one complained about the change; Anni had been a terrible cook.
When he came into town, John the gravedigger took the room above the chemist shop. Anni lived in back of the shop, so the upstairs had been sitting empty.
The best the room had to offer was the view of the fenced-in graveyard past the new-painted lodge.
The flat, empty ground had never been touched; as yet, no one who lived in Konstan Spring had died.
The room above the chemist was small and Anni was an indifferent hostess, but John didn’t move quarters. People figured he was sweet on Anni, or that the view of the graveyard was as close as a gravedigger could come to living above his store like an honest man.
No one minded his reasons. Anni needed the money. In Konstan Spring the chemist never did much business.
The first man John buried was Samuel Ness, who got himself on the losing end of a fight with his horse.
The grave appeared one shovel at a time, sharp-edged and deep as a well. There was no denying John was an artist. The priest thanked John for the grave even before he asked God to commend Samuel’s soul.
“Won’t work,” muttered Mrs. Domar.
Mrs. Domar was Samuel’s nearest neighbor. She had come to Konstan Spring already a widow; her husband had fallen ill on the road, and died in an Inuit town just twenty miles from the Spring. She persevered, but the stroke of bad luck had turned her into a pessimist.
Samuel had a young orchard at the edge of his property line, and Mrs. Domar knew that if there was a way Nature could work against her inheriting that little grove of apple trees, it would.
It was the usual funeral, except that the priest, after the service, suggested that John fill in a little of the ground before the body went inside it.
John obeyed. He wasn’t one to argue with the clergy.
Two days later, Samuel Ness wriggled his way out of the shallow grave and came home to his farm and his orchard.
“I knew it,” muttered Mrs. Domar as soon as she saw him coming.
John, if he was surprised, said nothing. He smoothed down the earth after the priest had taken back the headstone, and for a few nights, if you walked all the way from the outlying farms to the chemist’s, you could see John sitting at his window, looking out over the sparse graveyard as if deciding what to do.
Everyone worried. They’d feared a gravedigger would lose the will for it in Konstan Spring, and they worried that if he went out into the world there would be questions about his hardiness. They had been lucky with Frode, but luck gave out any time.
People suggested that the folkvarder meet with him and point out the hundred-year contract John had signed. They suggested the priest give him counsel. Some suggested Anni should. If he was sweet on her, her kind face would do some good.
Philip Prain, who minded the general store, was the brave one who finally asked John what his plans might be, now that everything was in the open and John knew that the water wasn’t just for one’s health.
John said, “Try harder, I reckon.” After a moment he asked, “We see a lot of travelers?”
Folkvarder Gray and Prain and Kit down at the whorehouse held a Town Council meeting to discuss the problem.
They spoke for a long time, and made up their minds on the subject. They planned to put it to a vote before the town, since the town was very strict about having a say, but none of them would object. John was a treasure they couldn’t lose, and there were bound to be some drifters coming by sooner or later.
In the normal way of things, strangers would have a drink at the saloon and a girl at the whorehouse and ride out the next day, but there was no record of travelers once they were this far into the wild; not everyone can be missed.