Death Cultivator by eden Hudson (best books to read .TXT) 📕

“That’s probably not true,” Kest said. “There probably was a trace, but the people who moved in afterward either ignored or scavenged the clues when Van Diemann started being used as a penal colony.”

Rali wrinkled his nose. “That doesn’t make as good a story.”

Kest shrugged. “Van Diemann Mining Company—the people who first colonized the planet—launched investigations, but never discovered what happened to their lost miners.”

“Probably got eaten by chaos creatures,” I said. “Or creek carp.”

Rali threw up his hands. “You’re as bad as Kest.”

“I mean, your story fits the setting,” I said, looking at the false fronts and corrugated tin roofs.

“Don’t patronize me,” he said.

But I’d been serious. It was the way the shadows were stretching away from the last sliver of white sun and the wind was blowing up dust devils all over the place. No one was out in the dusty streets, and I couldn’t see lights in any of the windows. All it needed was some eerie music and a tumbleweed to roll through to be fully set up for filming a haunted Western.

“Come on, you two story-ruiners,” Rali said.

We followed him along the outskirts until we got to a rusty shipping container about half the size of the ones on Earth. There was a lean-to built against the side, open on the end facing us and closed in on the rest. Crude metal guttering ran around the edges and let out into a rain barrel next to the door.

“Home sweet home,” Rali said.

His sister grunted and headed for the shipping container.

“Kest,” he said.

“Fine. Social niceties.” She dropped her bag on the metal floor of the shipping container with a loud clank and leaned against the wall. “Go ahead.”

Rali flicked his hair out of his face, then reached inside the lean-to and pulled out a tin cup. Bowing, he gestured to the rain barrel, then offered me the cup.

“Please, honored guest, quench your thirst and be welcomed into our humble home.”

Usually when people call their house humble, they’re trying to pretend like three bathrooms, an upstairs, and a finished basement is nothing to brag about. They’re not asking you to drink water out of an open barrel that looked like it’d been sitting for a while.

But I liked these guys. Plus, they kept saving my life. Pretending like I wasn’t going to get dysentery from their welcome ceremony was the least I could do.

“Thanks, uh, honored host.” I took the cup, scooped some water out of the barrel, and drank it.

It was hot and tasted kind of like the air smells after a summertime sprinkle on a gravel road. Up against something like fresh, cold shut-in water, rain-barrel brew definitely wasn’t going to win any competitions. I nodded and tried to smile like it was great.

“He drank it!” Rali crowed, clapping his hands.

Kest giggled. “That’s so gross.”

“You jerks.” I frowned down at the barrel as it dawned on me. “Is this, like, the toilet barrel or something?”

“It’s for washing,” Rali said, wiping his eyes. “And Kest uses it to quench metal.”

I threw what was left in the bottom of the cup at him, but that only made him laugh harder, so I got him in a headlock. We wrestled around for a minute, laughing like dorks. Rali was a lot stronger than he acted. There had to be some serious muscle under that fat. But I gave him a good run for his money, and we both ended up on the ground.

“I’m nonviolent,” he yelled between snorts. “You’re beating a nonviolent man!”

“Tell him to stop pulling my hair!” I yelled.

By then, Kest was doubled over holding her stomach. “Honored guest!”

“You guys are the worst,” I yelled.

I stumbled a little as Rali threw me off. We stood there panting for a second, both of us waiting to see if the other one would start things back up. When neither one of us did, I dusted off my jeans and looked at the shipping container.

“So, is this even your house or are you lying about that, too?” I asked.

“That used to be our house,” Rali said. “But Kest’s shop took it over.” He pointed to the lean-to. “That’s our house now.”

Kest scraped a boot in the dirt. “The new room’s nicer anyway. You can sleep in it without suffocating. Breezes never make it inside the shop, even when you leave the door open and the vent fan on.”

“I believe that,” I said, eyeing the metal sides.

“In all seriousness, we need a real supper,” Rali said. “No freeze-dried Meal Bagz. Tonight, we party. I’m making soba.”

He ducked into the lean-to.

Metal clinked as Kest picked up her bag of scavenged materials and headed into her shop. A generator cranked to life, and light flickered on in the shipping container and the lean-to.

I hadn’t realized how much my eyes had adjusted to the darkness until I was squinting at the light coming from Kest’s shop. The wood lean-to was lined with a string of white Christmas lights—or probably some other kind of holiday in this universe—but what was flooding out of the shipping container was like the brights on a new car. I wandered over to the doorway, followed by some big moths.

A high-quality work lamp hung from a hook on the ceiling. It looked like the only new piece of equipment in the shop.

Back home, Gramps and I had had a little shed behind the trailer house, where we kept the mower and a bunch of junk he bought at yard sales and flea markets. Literal junk. Old boxes of bolts, rusty tools, implements he was going to fix someday. Tons of it, all piled up in a shed the size of a bathroom. And more always seemed to appear over the winter. Every spring, I had to drag half the shed out just to get to the mower.

Kest’s shop was like that, except three times as big. A couple workbenches had been built along one wall of the shipping container, one slightly higher than the other, but