Chapter 1

They worked all night and eventually the sun caressed over the edge of the world. Pink and orange lit the sky until it turned and fell into a greenish blue. The cairn was built for Biligii out of branches and rocks. They would have set it on fire, to send his ashes to the next life. But they respected his wishes. 

Boy didn’t believe all that anyway, but it was a nice sentiment.

Birds gotta eat I suppose. Shit. He’ll smell for miles. Is all he thought.

Boy had cleaned up the dead youngins. He bled them, and bathed them, tied them and prepared them for travel absentmindedly. It included covering them in burlap, stuffed with herbs and gut lacquer. He would say he was troubled but no thoughts could worm their way into his head. He seemed far away, watching himself prepare the corpses from over his own shoulder.

 Biq got to work on the Marked bodies. He was scrounging anything from their camp they could use or barter with. He had chopped off their proof already. They usually would go to Marked land to bury them. But they made an exception and did the burial here. They had to get the others home before they started falling apart. They made markers for this cursed place, and said their respects for the dead.

Now it was time to leave. To sulk home.

Boon finally spoke up, wrapping up his face from the sun, including covering the dent in his cranium with his hood. His voice was riddled with worry. “Should we find Quin? Before we leave… It’s her brother after all. She might want to send him off with us. We don’t know these parts so well. I would rather she was with us.”

Biq waved his hand. “We will find her on the way.”

They hoisted Billgii up onto the bed of branches. He was lashed with hemp and his clothes buttoned up so he looked neat. He was already stiffening up, his face turning up in a terrible way. 

Biq said a few words. “Billgi was a strong man. A good friend. Pim used to call him Snaketongue for his quick wit. His sweet words. For his ability to make friends from enemies. He was a great Hired Hunter, a true servant and warrior.” 

Boon walked up to the body placing a large hand on his friends cold shoulder. You could see the quiver of his back as he tried to speak. Finally, through sobs he took a deep breath and said. “We’ll take care of your sister. Don’t worry Billgii Snaketounge.”

Boy scoffed, he didn’t want to look at this mess. 

Another funeral. Another dead hunter. 

It was bad luck and stupidity that did it. He thought of the others that had left them, leaving their small band smaller. Was he the only one that remembered how Bill got his surname? 

He got the name Snaketoungue for his lying.

Boy shook his head and spat on the ground. They kill snakes on sight out here.

He closed his dead friend's eyes and weighed them shut with stones. 

—-

After finishing everything and working through the night Boy felt sick, tired, angry, but not sad. His eyes were heavy but not from weeping. Not like previous departures, not like his father… He couldn’t think about that now. 

“I’m not even crying Biq. Why aren’t I crying?” He asked out loud as they ate and prepared to leave.

The gruff man snorted and scooped out his hard biscuit from his cup of water before throwing it back into his gullet. “I’ve seen you sob before.” He noted. “It’s like a waterfall. A dumb Firstling thing. Your body needs the water and it knows it. Long hike ahead.” Biq replied matter of factly. 

Boy looked up at the fragments of the moon in the morning light. “You think Belshuun will take him?” He asked. He didn’t even believe in all that, but he wanted to hear it anyway.

“Not yet,” Biq responded. “He is not done serving. But soon. He will join her once we make her whole.” Biq looked into the sky and held his hand to the shattered moon. 

“Will it be better there?” He asked, a trace of hope in his voice so small a mouse would have scoffed at it.

Biq laughed for the first time in awhile. “Better. Ye. These are the Shaken Lands, anywhere is better than here.” 

Boy thought about that for a while, as they finished, as they hiked through the dead forest leaving more dead things behind them. Later, when the world began to rumble and an earthquake rolled through, he was reminded of those words.

Anywhere is better than here.

 —----

It was a two-and-a-half-day journey to get back to that small village by the dried up creek. Quin arrived in camp the first night. She didn’t say a word. Boy wanted to talk to her. To laugh like they had in the past. He didn’t. He couldn’t. He had no right.

I missed after all.

Instead they all traveled in silence. The second day the two bodies began to smell. Flies had started to plague them, more than usually with the spring heat on the rise. They whistled around the tied up bodies secured to Seba’s back. The mustang's white belly had streaks of dried brown blood where the bodies had leaked. He whinnied under their weight and threw his head in irritation at the flies and the stink.   

They had just exited the dead forest. More green greeted them as they walked through the tall grass plains. The trees started to hold fresh leaves. The brown gave way to yellowish green as they crossed a small stream, and by the time they crossed another stream about midday, there were trees and shrubs that were emerald. Boy had walked Seba behind the others. Boy’s sweat dripped down his back and stained his shirt darker. It clung to his shoulders and felt glued on. His smell was growing but he could handle it. Unlike his Clinii compatriots. They would close their mouths and wave away the smell of a filthy human.

The trees became less sparse in their trek. Soon the low plains trees were clustered and they were walking through a family of oaks. The whole day Boy kept replaying the fight in his head. He knew what done was done, it was best to move on, yet Bill wouldn’t move on. He would stay there forever, getting picked apart in the heat. Boy would try to think of other things, shaking the imagery out of his head like a dog breaking the neck of a rabbit. But soon he would be back to thinking about how he got his friend killed. Before he knew it the sun was going down once more. They would reach the village the next morning.

He took off his wrappings and shirt where they made their small camp. Hung them on a tree branch away from the clearing they laid in. He told the rest he would wash Seba’s hide and left with a nod from Biq and Boon. There was a creek near and an hour left of sun. He groomed the stallion, washing away the brown blood from his hide. The horse was ornery at first smashing his hoof into the muddy bank. But soon the thick scrub brush relaxed him and the water cooled him as he poured it over the horse. He was brushed as clean as he could be and there was sun left to spare. Taking a step back he appreciated his work. The horse was a bastard but he was part of the old gang, one of the last. Boy rubbed his wrist absentmindedly. The same wrist that could still not bend all the way back after being bucked off of the spotted stallion. Whether it was sprained or broken he did not know, but it didn’t heal well and still caused him trouble. He gave the horse a hard pat.

“Yeah you are a real stubborn bastard huh? A true Hired Hunter.” He noted. 

Seba threw his mane and whirled around trotting through the spring. He started to drink as Boy watched from the banks. The white of Seba’s speckled hide reminded him of the white hand of Quick, spattered with brown as he tried to hold his neck together. It reminded him of Bill’s bone coming out of the stump that was his arm.

Boy sat down on the muddy shore. Staring off in the glistening water. The sunset reflected on it like thousands of fireflies. Here he could cry in peace, no one to see him but a dumb horse. He thought of Bill, and the time they spent together. No tears came. He thought of Quin and how she’ll be even more withdrawn.

I’m losing her too, they’re twins. Half of her died with him. 

Still no tears came, he tried frowning and squinting his eyes, willing the pain to greet him. 

Nothing. 

Instead there was something else. A different pain hiding in him, he couldn’t find it or pinpoint it perhaps it had been there even before the fight. It was a sinkhole that robbed him of his tears. It swallowed his sorrow and greedily stripped his suffering. He was left with nothing but feeling empty. Hollow. To him, that was the saddest part of all. It stole his grief, and left him with only himself. A rotten deal.

Boy had promised Bill he would find the Tallman with him. How he would lead his own posse one day. How after he succeeded in all that Bill wanted to settle down and find a woman. Instead, he was killed by barely a man grown, and his best friend couldn't cry for him.

He sat there for a while more and watched the sun fall behind the horizon. Watching the creek grow dark and the sparkles dancing on it fade.

No one will cry for me either. They’re all gone or dead.

When was the last time I cried? 

It must have been years ago after the long winter with the Farmplots. How old was he then? 14? 15? Was it after the fight in the West? He remembered that blood soaked day. He remembered Pim and how he smiled, the scar cut through it vertically on one side, and his laugh was a wheeze punctuated with chortled cracks. “Whatever happens has already happened, time to meet it” he heard him say and laugh as he readied his two gats. 

Boy shrugged off his memory and saw that the sun was only a sliver. In its place was a dreariness that revealed itself to him. He didn’t realize how exhausting the trek had been. They pushed hard today and his body ached. He hadn’t slept well the night before or the night before last. The whole time his brain wouldn’t turn off, thinking of that, thinking of this; Thinking of things he should’ve changed. The sun vanished for good and his thoughts went with it. His hand dropped a little more into the cool mud of that small riverbank. His eyes closed. He allowed himself to get a small portion of shut-eye in.

——

The river was there, like it had been in real life. But he couldn’t see it.

He heard the rushing water behind him. He smelt the river spray in the air. They had been up in the treeline in real life, his dad propped against one of many new trees that sprang up after the neverending winter. Now in his dream it was just one. A dead twisting thing. Lonely, wreathed in shadow against a sunset that bled crimson on the horizon, like a cut to the sky’s throat. The tree was so tall Boy could not crane his neck to see the top of its branches. The limbs were hands, bony fingers that matched his father’s. They reached down with swollen joints like an old man gripping to things that were no more. His father lay there, with Boy at his side, under that lone tree sprouting from murk.

This isn’t right, Boy thought. This isn’t what happened.

But Boy forgot about what had happened in an instant and only understood what he saw. For he looked down and saw his father’s figure.

His dad laid there, with his tanned skin now turned pale and stretched over bones. This was no longer the man who raised him. It wasn’t the man who taught him many different knots. It wasn’t the man who quizzed him on plant life. “Aspen, fir, pine,” Boy remembered saying, as his father pointed to different trees as they trekked across the forest floor. He never spoke, just pointing at different plants and Boy would respond with the answers “edible, poisonous, medicinal.”. This wasn’t the man who taught him how to swim; just like he had promised when they lived in their Hole with the others. This wasn’t the man who loved Boy’s mother so much he risked everything to find her.

This wasn’t his dad anymore, just a dead man. A dying man. A ghost. Boy couldn’t see him. Not really. He saw his chest rise and fall, the ribs looked like they would break through the clammy skin. He couldn’t see his face. It was just a blur covered in darkness. Always just out of the corner of his eye. Masking it. Boy would try and look, to make out any features, but he was terrified of what he would see and instead looked down once more. His hands gripped the black mud, squishing it through his grip. He rocked back and forth on his knees.

He was crying now. the world smelt like copper and rot. The tears felt like acid on his face and he clawed at them to stop the pain. These were child’s hands, not his, and the tears were blood. He wiped at his face trying to clear the ichor. But it wouldn’t quench the flow and his hands were stained red. He furiously wiped them on the ground he was kneeling on. The grass and mud would clean his hands a bit. But there was no grass. The ground was bodies, every sort. Human, Clinii, Willow, Argo, Glik, even skulls of the great Wals, all laying lifeless, stacked on top of one another in a pyramid, cultivating in the dead twisting tree, his dad, and himself.

 I have to get to the river, to clean up, to get away. He thought.

He turned around but remembered the river was dry. It was always dry. He turned hoping against it anyway. But now nothing was there. They were alone in a void of black. Here only dead things lingered.

What is going on?

He shook his dad, willing him to wake up. His father moved, convulsed. And then the thing that was once his father spoke. If it was even that. The words seemed to vibrate from the ground and it dug under his every nerve. It was as eerie as a creaking door on a still night. What had his dad even sounded like? This wasn't him. He couldn’t see his mouth move and the voice didn’t come from his body. It was inside Boy’s head, making his ears ring. 

What he said eluded him. He knew only pain when the words rattled around his skull, cracking like thunder.

What language is that?

It boomed louder and he felt the blood start coming from his ears too. It burned, it steamed. The voice was yelling now, whatever it was.

The branches of the tree were suddenly so close. They scratched at his head, and he had to duck lower to avoid them. He realized they were moving, they had been moving this whole time, reaching, hungry for flesh. They grabbed him and pulled his father away. Boy fought, snapping a few. He lunged over his dying dad. Hugging him tight. 

They wouldn’t get him. They wouldn’t take him away from Boy.

But they did. As easily as pulling a petal off a flower. It happened so quickly. Boy wondered if he even put up a fight? If his arms were really that weak?

Boy sat ready for the limbs to tear him apart. But they ignored him, left him sitting there on those bodies. They lifted his sick father up, hand over hand, until he was so far up that thousands of branches sat under him. Boy knew what was going to happen and he screamed. Terrified, pleading for them not to do it. The words turned liquid and his mouth filled with that acidic and copper taste.

The boy's father was on a pyre, and in the next moment it was lit. The world exploded in firelight. Illuminating all the faces of the dead he knelt on. Their eyes looked a dull purple as the flames burned in them, they smiled and watched his father burn. Boy felt his head shake to the right. He had been punched by something. Again. His head twisted to the right, blood still pouring from him. He screamed but this time made a sound.

—--

His voice echoed in the darkness and he lunged up. The scream turned into a rasping gasping cough. He gripped at the mud as he spat up flem. The fit subsided. Seba fled away, turning in circles looking at the strange human on the muddy bank. Boy thought he was still in that inky blackness but realized that Belshuun and her pieces hung in the air. There were stars out too. When he focused he could see the trickle of the creek, the moon reflecting in it with streaks of white. The mud under him was cool, his butt wet. He stood up cursing under his breath and wiped his muddy hands on his brown canvas pants. He walked to the creek and washed his hands off.

It’s only mud. He thought to himself as he scrubbed his hands clean.

He splashed water on his face washing the sweat that accumulated on his brow and cheeks. Seba came up to him once more, nudging his head with his snout. Boy stood up patting the horse on the neck.

“You could have left me, but you stayed, didn’t you?” Boy said. He smiled as he pet the horse on his face. Seba snorted and flipped his mane. 

“Probably only because you owe me, right?” 

Boy picked up his lasergat that he leaned against some rocks and set off. He was the one who bought the horse, and he had named the horse Sebastian after a famous horse of old with the same name. He always thought it was a silly name for a horse but Seba was strong stock and he figured the name would do justice. 

Boy guided Seba back, trying hard to not stumble around in the night. He was chilly, still wearing no shirt. Sitting in the cold mud for an hour left him shivering. He eventually found the small camp. No fire was burning. That was fine. He would get his wool blanket and be cozy enough. He tied the horse to a tree with a knot his real father had taught him. He looked at the group. 

Biq was face up, lying on his lumpy pad. His arm over his eyes. The Old Man was fast asleep, his tongue hanging out of his mouth. Across the way was Boon. Wrapped up in his blanket staring out into the night. Quin was nowhere to be found. Her pack was gone too. Boy walked to Boon and waved a hand in front of his face. Boon took a while but eventually his attention turned to Boy’s grinning face.

“Hey,” Boy said.

“Sorry.” He whispered. “I can’t see well at night. Not like you.”

 He scoffed. “I was right in front of you.” Boy sat down next to him, wrapping his blanket around his shoulders so the two matched. He stared off into the night as well. “Couldn’t you smell me?”

“Yeah if I was trying, instead I was just listening.”

“To what?”

The big man took a deep breath, his tongue felt his poking canine on the left side of his oddly small muzzle. “Well… I think the woods are haunted.” He finally stated. 

“Yeah and why do you say that?” Boy squinted into the night. He might believe it, his bad dream was still haunting him somewhat. 

“I heard something. Like a moan. I think the trees don’t like us very much.” He looked up at the night sky. “Could be Aeryns though,” he finished.

Boy snickered. “Could be, but I doubt it. They wouldn’t bother coming down here. They would just… you know. Blast us from the sky.”

Boon wrinkled his snout at that. “They might want their gun back.” He nodded towards Boy who held the metal rifle in his lap. The reason they called him Lasershot. It was a long bracketed otherworldly rifle. The polished steel was wrapped in cloth for grip on the handle and again on the barrel. It had black sights that rose up from along its top. Attached to the shoulder rest was the sun turner that folded out and went even farther back over his shoulder, or under it with a swivel. It was a pad of sealed green gel that twinkled with a held charge. It absorbed the energy from a bright day when it was folded out. Never needing to be reloaded in a traditional way, just charged. But at night, well, at night it held three shots. He had to be particular when pulling the trigger. He couldn’t afford to miss. 

“Well they can try and take it. But they’ll have to grab it from the dangerous end.” Boy smiled and raised his eyes at Boon. Boy raised the barrel slightly, pointing it to the heavens. Boon scanned the night sky and shifted in his seat.

Boy nudged him with his own shoulder. “Hey, what you heard was me. Most likely. I took a little nap by the creek and had a bad dream. I yelled and scared Seba so much the damn horse almost kicked me.”

Boon's eyes slowly traveled from the trees to Boy's face, with the blanket around him he looked like a turtle peering out of his shell. “Oh” he said as he let the blanket fall off his shoulders. “Okay then.” Boon let the cool night air across his wide shoulders. He only wore his poncho now, not even an undershirt. “Still you can’t be too careful.” He held his club to his chest. A big piece of oak, round on the end with bumps and notches in it from various fights. The end of it was shaped like a cudgel with a pick coming out the back if anyone had armor that it needed to pierce through. 

“Yeah. Well ghosts don’t like lasers too much so why don’t I watch while you sleep.” He held his long metal rifle and turned to the woods.

“Was it the usual dream?” Boon asked with a little concern in his voice.

“Ye.” 

Boon snorted and shook his head. “You are an odd people Boy. Even when Firstlings rest they don’t really rest. Seems...” He thought for a moment. “Troublesome.” then smiled that open mouth smile. Proud of the word.

He agreed. They sat in silence for a while until Boy spoke again. “Quin gone?”

“Yeah, she said she would meet us at Tradetown. She doesn’t want to deal with the village.”

“Hmm,”  

I don’t want to deal with them either, he thought.

“Hey Boy?”

“Ye Boon?”

“Will we see her again? I hope we do.” He asked as he leaned back. Arms behind his head.

“We will.” Boy said. But he didn’t know if he believed it. They were ten once and now they were four and a horse that wouldn’t let anything living ride it. They were a sad excuse for Hired Hunters. It almost made him laugh.

Things were funny when you looked real hard. Pim would always say that. 

I suppose he was right. 

But someone else is laughing, it sure as fuck isn’t us.

“Whatever happens tomorrow, Boon, stay clear. Things go south, and they get violent over what happened, at what we did. Just run. Find Quin at the Trade. Tell her sorry about Bill for me.”

“Okay,” He said slowly. “What about you two then?”

“We might have to accept whatever judgment they see fit on us.”   

“You don’t even believe in Belshuun.” He noted, leaning up slightly.

“Yeah well I don’t have a choice. I’m not letting the Old Man go in alone. I’m sure as hell not gonna fight my way out of a whole town, we did that once.” He chuckled. He had meant it as a joke but they both stopped for a second and thought back. Their eyes unfocused and far away.

Suddenly the woods whispered “Boon!” 

They both jumped. Boy had shouldered his weapon and swept it towards the trees. 

Aeryns? 

He aimed it up to the canopy for a second before bringing it back down. That was a stupid thought and Boon had put nonsense in his head. Boon fumbled with his club, until he raised it above his head. In a high guard stance.

Boy realized it wasn’t the woods that whispered but the shaking Old Man. He was rumbling with laughter. Having a coughing fit he was laughing so hard.

“You Argo’s ASS Biq!” Boon shouted, stomping his feet.

The Old Man rolled to his side, still giggling. “Go to sleep. Or talk elsewhere. We get paid, or we do the paying.” He nodded gruffly. “Tomorrow.”

Boy laughed for what felt like a long time and Boon started cracking up too. They leaned on one another and smiled and slapped at the ground. Soon they tired out and went to their respective places in camp. Boy closed his eyes, letting rest take him. For once he had a smile on his face. It was a much needed relief, until the dream begun again.