will
The sisters, the three of them, asked their brother while he laid up in bed burning of fever where it was that he wanted to be buried. He told the girls, In the roots of the silent city. And because he was the seventh and last son of their father—himself the seventh son of a ruined oil baron—they had no choice but to obey his dying wishes. He was twelve years old and flayed by sickness, but they swore that they would see his body to the end.
When it was finished, they wrapped their poor brother in the last of the linens, remarking on how light and frail his bones felt beneath the fabric. One sister was reminded of a shallow river skittering over sharp rocks; another thought for a brief moment of the box kite she’d made as a child, the one that flew up once and crashed back to earth in a tangle of crepe and sticks.
They walked through the hills for four days and three nights, their brother held aloft between their shoulders. They prayed to the blind god for the mists to lift, if just this once, but the fog remained. On the fourth day, in the shadow of the iron juttings that held the decaying city in the clouds, the sisters raked back the clay with their nails and placed their brother into the ground. One of the girls salted the soil so that he might stay down.
Their labor took several hours, and by the time they were finished, night was creeping back into the world. The banks of fog shifted. Something shuddered deep in the steel of the roots of the iron city. One of the sisters—Therese, resplendent Therese—lifted her head to the belly of the forgotten metropolis. Her skin prickled, as if she were certain that they were being watched.
(Photo: Dyrk.Wyst)
