Gravemound by Kim Fielding (snow like ashes TXT) 📕

Back home, Phineas would have laughed off a tale like that as pure fantasy. But he’d seen some strange things in this place, so perhaps there was at least a kernel of truth to the story. “That’s creepy.”

“It is. Luckily, most of us needn’t worry about it. The soul remains with the body for only three days—then it moves on to wherever souls are supposed to go. And in the sunlight, reapers are nothing but errant breezes, unable to harm anything. So it’s only three nights you have to worry about.”

Phineas stopped mid-nod when a terrible thought struck him. “Somboon,” he croaked, his throat almost too tight to speak.

“Oh no, dear, it’s all right. You were recovering from your accident, but we watched over him for you. We kept him safe.”

“Thank you.” Cool relief rushed through his veins. He took a few deep breaths. “Watched over—that’s what Thozzon asked me to do.”

The gathered crowd murmured at this, but Gurthcir waved them to silence. “The reapers can’t take a soul if a living person protects it for those three nights. It’s the lonely ones they go after. The unloved and abandoned. The lost.” She sighed. “And the soldiers and victims of war who are left unguarded. That’s how the reapers have survived for so long—they’ve profited from our wars.”

Phineas glanced at the barrow full of jars and sieves and other brewing equipment, all good quality and in fine shape. “Thozzon’s not a soldier, auntie.”

Gurthcir paused her knitting. She looked both sorrowful and fierce. “That man has never lifted a finger to help anyone. He doesn’t stand guard when others die. He doesn’t share what he has, not even when he has too much and others far too little. He overcharges for fermented milk. He’s thought about nobody but himself. Some years ago, just before the most recent war, a terrible drought killed our crops and our animals. Thozzon had plenty of food in storage and he could have given it away without endangering himself, but he refused to hand over anything unless people paid extortionate amounts. Most of us couldn’t afford it. Children starved to death.”

The other villagers nodded, a few of them blinking back tears.

“That’s terrible, auntie. But I promised him I’d watch over his grave when he dies. Is that okay?”

“Of course, Sky-Demon.” She smiled warmly and gave him another pat.

Well, at least Phineas now had a better understanding of what he’d agreed to and why Thozzon was so desperate to make a deal. He stood, but before he continued onward to his hut, a question occurred to him. “Are reapers dangerous to living people?”

Everyone laughed as if this was the silliest thing they’d ever heard. “Of course not,” Gurthcir replied, her knitting restarted. “As long as we’re alive, our souls are stuck on too tight to do reapers any good.”

“So to protect Thozzon’s, what do I do?”

“Tell the reaper to bugger off.”

Thozzon might have been the world’s worst neighbor, but he followed through on his word, personally delivering a wagonful of bulging grain sacks and additional supplies the next morning. He didn’t help Phineas unload them or carry them into his hut, and Thozzon’s sour expression suggested he wasn’t at all pleased to have been forced into this position. But Phin hadn’t expected him to suddenly transform into a friend.

As soon as the wagon was empty, Thozzon hurried away, leaving Phin to decide where to store things and how to set up his little brewery. His hut was too tiny to do more than temporarily house the sacks of grain, but he also had a long, low structure that must have once been a barn or something similar. Although most of the roof was missing, all the walls and some of the roof beams were intact. He guessed that, with some help, it wouldn’t be too hard to make the building sound again.

So Phin spent the next couple of days cleaning out the debris from inside the barn and tamping down the dirt floor. He even managed to install new shelves against the interior stone walls, where the old ones had rotted away. and he fashioned a makeshift door out of an extra blanket. It wouldn’t be enough during the winter—a chilly season here—but that was months away. He’d construct something better before then.

For the first time since the crash landing, he was looking at the future with optimism. It felt as if his tomorrows contained possibilities instead of despair. This certainly wasn’t how he’d expected his life to turn out—living largely alone in a low-tech world, frighteningly distant from everything he’d known—yet when he looked at it objectively, it wasn’t necessarily worse than his original path. Practicing law had been a way to make a living, not his soul’s passion, so he didn’t miss it especially. His current hut was more rustic than his old apartment, but also more charming, far quieter, and surrounded by all the open space he could possibly want. He did miss some of the technology and creature comforts, but not the noise, the crowds, the feeling of being constantly surrounded by metal and glass and concrete and plastic.

Oh, but Phineas missed Somboon, even the things that had once annoyed him, like the way Somboon sucked his teeth loudly when he was concentrating or the dirty laundry he never managed to put in the ion cleaner. Sometimes, especially at night, the loss felt so great that it caused Phineas actual pain. Yet he also found himself smiling at sweet memories now, which he hoped would eventually overwhelm the bitterness. And Gurthcir’s matchmaking attempts were starting to feel simply premature rather than horrifying.

Someday Phineas might open his heart again.

But in the meantime he had plenty to keep him busy. Arrowgrass wasn’t the same as the grains he was used to, so he started his experiments with local yeasts and bittering agents, knowing it would be a while before he produced anything remotely drinkable. But that