Red Rising

This is the ultimate act of love. Eo’s silent requiem.

Women begin to cry, and as I pass they reach to touch Eo’s face, to touch mine and help me open the ventilation duct. I drag my wife through the tight metal space, taking her to where we made love beneath the stars, where she told me her plans and I did not listen. I hold her lifeless body and hope her soul sees me in a place where we were happy.

I dig a hole near the base of a tree. My hands, covered with the dirt of our land, are red like her hair as I take her hand and kiss her wedding band. I place the outer bulb of the haemanthus atop her heart and take the i

Kieran strikes me in the face when he sees me back in the township. Loran ca

I finish the meal just as Ugly Dan comes. My mother does not leave the table as I’m pulled away. Her eyes stay fixed on where my hand lay. I think she believes if she does not look up, this will not happen. Even she can only bear so much.

They will hang me before a full assembly at nine in the morning. I’m dizzy for some reason. My heart feels fu

“Is that all your strength?”

My people sing, we dance, we love. That is our strength. But we also dig. And then we die. Seldom do we get to choose why. That choice is power. That choice has been our only weapon. But it is not enough.

They give me my last words. I call Dio up. Her eyes are bloodshot and swollen. She’s a fragile thing, so unlike her sister.

“What were Eo’s last words?” I ask her, though my mouth moves slowly, oddly.

She glances back to Mother, who finally followed but now shakes her head. There is something they are not telling me. Something they don’t want me to know. A secret held back even though I am about to die.

“She said she loved you.”

I don’t believe her, but I smile and kiss her forehead. She can’t handle more questions. And I’m dizzy. Hard to speak.

“I’ll tell her you say hello.”

I do not sing. I am made for other things.

My death is senseless. It is love.

But Eo was right, I don’t understand this. This is not my victory. This is selfish. She told me to live for more. She wanted me to fight. But here I am, dying despite what she wanted. Giving up because of the pain.

I panic as suicides do when they realize their folly.

Too late.

I feel the door beneath me open. My body falls. Rope flays my neck. My spine creaks. Needles lance my lumbar. Kieran stumbles forward. Uncle Narol shoves him away. With a wink, he touches my feet and pulls.

I hope they do not bury me.

PART II REBORN

There is a festival where we wear the faces of demons to ward evil spirits from our dead in the vale. The faces sparkle with fool’s gold.

7

LAZARUS

I do not see Eo in death. My kin believe we see our loved ones when we pass on. They wait for us in a green vale where woodfire smoke and the scent of stews thicken the air. There is an Old Man with dew on his cap who makes safe the vale, and he stands with our kin waiting for us along a stone road beside which sheep graze. They say the mist there is fresh and the flowers sweet, and those who are buried pass along the stone road faster.

But I do not see my love. I do not see the vale. I see nothing but phantom lights in darkness. I feel pressure, and I know, as would any miner, that I am buried beneath the earth. I loose a soundless scream. Dirt enters my mouth. Panic fills me. I ca

It is minutes before I look up from my knees. I crouch in an abandoned mine, an old tu

I’m not dead.

The realization takes longer in coming than one might have thought. But there’s a bloody wound around my neck where the rope cut the skin. There’s dirt in the lashes on my back.

Still, I’m not dead.

Uncle Narol didn’t pull my feet hard enough. But surely the Tinpots would have checked, unless they were lazy. Not a stretch to think that, but something else is at play. I was too woozy when I walked to the gallows. I feel something in my veins even now, a lethargy as though I’ve been drugged. Narol did this. He drugged me. He buried me. But why? And how would he escape being caught when he pulled my body down?

When a low rumbling comes from the darkness beyond the flare, I know I will have answers. A tumbler, like a metal beetle on six wheels, crawls over the crest of a long tu

Inside the tumbler, the globe light is red and bloody. I sit in a worn metal bucket seat across from the two figures that fetched me from my grave. The female’s mask is pale white and gold, horned like a cacodemon. Her eyes glitter darkly out from the eyeholes. The other figure is a timid man. He’s willowy and quiet, seemingly frightened of me. His snarling batface mask can’t conceal his shy glances or the way in which he hides his hands—a trait of the frightened, as Uncle Narol always claimed when he taught me to dance.

“You’re Sons of Ares, aren’t you?” I guess.

The weakling flinches, while the woman’s eyes are mocking.

“And you’re Lazarus,” she says. I find her voice cold, lazy; it plays with the ears as a cat plays with a caught mouse.

“I am Darrow.”

“Oh, we know who you are.”

“Don’t tell him anything, Harmony!” the weakling gibbers. “Dancer didn’t tell us to discuss anything with him till we get home.”

“Thank you, Ralph.” Harmony sighs at the weakling and shakes her head.

After realizing his error, the weakling shifts uncomfortably in his bucket seat, but I’ve stopped paying him any mind. Here, the woman is king. Unlike the weakling’s, her mask is like that of an old crone, one of the witches of Earth’s fallen cities who made soup from the marrow of children’s bones.

“You’re a mess.” Harmony reaches to touch my neck. I grab her hand and squeeze. Her bones are brittle as hollow plastic in a Helldiver’s hand. The weakling reaches for his thumper, but Harmony motions him to calm down.