The warm savannah wind carried the smell of sickness long before the cart reached the village.
Kalen tasted it first. A sharp tang on the tongue, a sourness that clung to the back of his throat. His father never mentioned it aloud, but Kalen could always tell when they were close to a house that held the dead. The world seemed to hush itself—like it was waiting for someone to pick up the pieces it had dropped.
Big Baloo, their large, gentle water buffalo, halted beside the first hut. His ribs twitched as he tried to shake off the flies that had settled into the cuts lining his sides. He'd earned them pushing through thorned shrubs all week. He was getting old—like most things they owned—but still sturdy. Father once said Big Baloo had nearly been sold at auction to a group of witches, destined to be beheaded and his skull gilded onto the body of a dying warrior. They would've made him a Minotaur war-beast for the Blood Witch Queendom.
But Father, long blond hair and all, had apparently happend to have a hair more cash that day than the other bidders decided Big Baloo was better suited & more profitable to be hauling corpses rather than giving it over to a life of crushing soldiers & sometimes prisoners in the arena for entertainment. Perhaps while it awaited another war.
Kalen jumped down from the cart as the back hatch swung open.
A group of women stood outside the mud hut, cloaked in black with freshly shaven heads. A raven squawked in a nearby tree hidden from sight. A song it had sang many times for the recently deceased. The women performed the grieving rites—motions meant, Kalen assumed, to help guide the soul so it didn't wander back home.
But this soul wouldn't know peace. Bodies needed rest before souls did, and this one wouldn't find rest for a long time.
He couldn't have been older than ten. The boy hung limp in his mother's arms, his head resting on her collarbone like he'd just fallen asleep. But his skin had that pale, glassy look disease left behind. Lips cracked. Eyes half open.
The woman's cheeks were streaked with dried tears on her dust-covered face. She flicked her gaze between Kalen's father and the cart behind them. The cart always silenced resistance: a wooden box large enough to hold forty bodies, its underside reinforced with bone. Hooks and tools dangled from its sides like dead fingers.
"You came," the woman whispered. "Though I prayed you would not."
Her husband stood behind her—broad-shouldered, head bowed—one dry, grit-stained hand resting lightly on her shoulder.
Kalen's father stepped forward, speaking in the common tongue.
"God fails to inform me of the prayers others pray as of late," he said, voice gentle but tired. "I must trust He guides me by happenstance.
Though I wish to be a skilled doctor or mage gifted with healing. But all I offer is a little relief from suffering in the form of coin."
Kalen always thought his father had a cotton mouth—soft-spoken, shaped to mirror the pain of whoever he was bargaining with. He could say something crude and still make it sound kind.
Father untied his coin pouch. The metallic clink echoed in the quiet. He tossed the bag to the dirt at her feet.
Kalen felt a wash of embarrassment at the gesture, he found it to be of poor taste for him to do that but he swallowed it.
He suffered from respecting his fathers choices & kind words in one moment only to be embarrassed by them in the next.
"Disease death," Father said. "Eyes intact. Limbs smooth. The White Sun pays well for children. They want the unmarred."
The mother didn't bend to pick up the silver coins. Her throat worked, and when she looked up at Father, something in her eyes stuck itself deep into Kalen's memory—anger, desperation, and a kind of grief that hollowed a person out.
"He was my last boy," she whispered. "The others died last winter."
Father let the silence sit to allow her more time to speak. He did not offer comfort. Death collectors were not priests after all.
"You can bury him," Father said. "Let the sands take him quickly." "Or you can let him work in the White Sun's afterlife. They will preserve him. They will honor his shape."
Only Kalen could tell his father was beginning to grow impatient with her.
She wavered. Kalen watched her resolve erode—the set of her jaw softening, her shoulders sinking.
At last, she lifted her boy again and walked toward Kalen who stood in the back of the hut instead of handing it to his father. As if kalens father was to unpure or unworthy to carry the boy. She lowered the child into kalens arms, slower than it needed to be, as if letting go too quickly might break something in her that hadn't already shattered.
"Tell him…" She stopped. Tears spilled freely. "Tell him I didn't want this. Tell him when the time comes." Her grip tightened on Kalen's arm. Then loosened.
"Sure," Kalen said.
He supposed she thought he would be present for when the ritual took place for her son. He felt guilt twist inside him—how easily he lied when the pressure of emotions pressed upon him. Maybe he really was his father's son. He thought.
Kalen walked out of the hut and carried the child to the cart.
Another group of death collectors arrived just then—three of them pulling their own smaller cart by hand as if it was a large wooden wheel barrel. They wore black face-wraps, as most collectors did. They liked to claim it was for respect. Everyone knew it was so no one recognized them when they went home.
Buying & selling the dead wasn't something to be proud of.
They hated Kalen's father for going barefaced. But they still respected him.
Kalen had just settled the boy onto the cart's bone-reinforced wood coffin. They only used coffins for the bodies worth protecting. The others they usually just wrapped, embalmed and let them enjoy the weather.
Kalens father had just finished inside the house allowing the family to count the coin in front of him.
Kalen's fathers relaxed demeanor didn't change though he had noticed them there as he walked back to the cart. Most other death collectors weren't worth being afraid of. Regardless of people claiming they will kill you if they find you alone on a road in order to sell you. And that sometimes they spread diseases to villages on purpose. To us these fears were unfounded conspiracies. But to the average man it was a commmon thought & worthy of adeherence.
He didn't tense.
He didn't smile.
He simply looked at them.
Collectors with face-wraps always moved like they were hiding something more than their identities—guilt, shame, or fear. These three were no different. Their shoulders hunched, their hands resting near the rusty crescent moon hook blades on their belts, as if ready for a scuffle they hoped wouldn't come.
It had been awhile since we had a good plague or war so they were all just scraping up the scraps of dead. Mostly old bodies or undesirables.
Father wiped his palms on his trousers, not in nerves but in habit, and leaned his weight against the cart rail as if he had all the time in the world.
"Well," he said, voice dry but not unkind. "You're late. The dead don't wait for men who walk slow."
One of the masked collectors bristled.
"We didn't come to take your work, Aranias."
"I know," Father replied, tipping his chin slightly. "If you had come to steal it, you'd have come with a crew a little less starved."
The man flinched beneath his wrap.
"Or perhaps a little more starved...."
Kalen smiled at the head collectors rebuttle. All the while watching his father closely. The relaxed posture, the stillness in his hands, the even tone—these were his weapons.
He didn't need threats. He didn't need the mask. He let the world see his face, and that alone unsettled them more than any blade.
The tallest collector nodded stiffly toward the cart.
"The underguild wanted a count from all nearby villages. We thought you'd be… elsewhere."
Father shrugged. "Work's work. Coin's coin. The boy was offered fairly."
The collectors exchanged glances. They couldn't argue nor had the energy too.
Finally, Father pushed away from the cart, stepping up the cart ladder as big Baloo twitched with a small burst of energy.
"Plenty of dead for all of us soon," Father murmured. "You boys keep to your routes. I'll keep to mine. No reason for us to not get along." Kalen felt embarrassed knowing that Truth be told they had gotten off of their route along time ago. Although these collectors probably had as well. Or it would've been the first sentence out of their mouth upon their arrival. Kalens father knew this.
A tense breath hung between them.
It had been a long while since the last big tribal war. Too long. Another one was forming on the horizon like a storm you don't want but can't stop staring at.
Kalen hated that collectors secretly welcomed it.
They acted like war disgusted them—heads shaking, voices low. Only to appeal to those that openly hated them and the trade they were in.
But when hunger set in and pockets emptied, every last one of them started hoping for bodies to fall again.
The worst part?
Kalen felt he wasn't sure that he was any different. And that this evil lived inside of him.
Then the collectors turned away, dragging their smaller cart toward the dirt trail heading east footsteps sharp and uneasy.
Father watched them go.
Not smug.
Not relieved.
Just… watchful.
Then he pulled his hair back while whistling to his White neck Raven who flew out of the nearby tree and landed on his arm. He gave him a treat for the good work done finding the dead body of the boy a day prior. Big Baloo kicked the dirt, and began to stomp his way southbound. Arañáis toured at Kalen, "Get some rest. Moons not slowing for us tonight." We have a big job tomorrow. I need you well rested.
So Kalen laid down in the mostly empty cart as his father lit the lantern while holding the reigns. He laid next to the dead body of the boy. It use to bother him sleeping next to a dead body. But strangely as of late he found it comforting as if he was sharing the experience of death with them. Though he would never admit that to someone. And so he rested his eyes as the subtle bumps on the dirt roads lulled him to sleep next to the coffin.