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eBook Category: Science Fiction
eBook Description: On a world obsessed with death, where society and its customs are locked in a stasis that has lasted centuries, a sculptor struggles to break free of the bonds both of his art and his world, while the greater society outside watches. You see, I'd attended a funeral, and were part of the long line of cars snaking through the streets toward the cemetery, where we filed out behind the casket in a cold, driving rain to stand around a muddy hole in the ground while the priest intoned a seemingly endless set of quotations. I leaned over to Denise and mentioned how damned uncomfortable I was. "It could be worse," she whispered back. As the priest droned on, I started to imagine just how...

eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: Analog, 1976
Fictionwise Release Date: March 2005

7 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [241 KB], eReader (PDB) [40 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [27 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [25 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [84 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [98 KB], hiebook (KML) [68 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [53 KB], iSilo (PDB) [23 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [29 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [56 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [40 KB]
Words: 8283
Reading time: 23-33 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

It is in my family to hate.

When I was much younger, I heard on many occasions the wailing cacophony of the dirgepipes. Our home had always stood unconcealed along the rutted path that led to the gravepit, and the funerary parades would pass the house and start up the long, wooded hill that led to Gehenah. Somehow in these memories the day is always cloudy, as if the storming of the pipes compelled the clouds to curtain the light, cloaking the procession in a shroud of dusk. I could only rarely recall any rain--perhaps I thought that the noise startled the banked clouds into holding their moisture. I would feel vaguely happy for the dead ones, because the faces of the mourners, chalky with funeral paint, were set in pained expressions that I associated with the discordant and strident music. I would put my hands to my ears and go back inside the house. Death was well known to me, and I feared it. Gehenah had taken both of my older brothers.

On the day of my parents' funeral--they were murdered after the Flood Day Insurrection: not unjustly, for they were among the leaders--it rained, as is usual for that season. The waters from the Western Mesa swelled the streams and flooded the lowlands. The dirgepipes scraped and clawed their tempestuous way along the muddy road, driving the mourners ahead of the assaulting sound. There were only a few of us, as it was not safe politically to weep for rebels. My grandmother m'Dame d'Vellia, Melian the Hunter, my younger brother Jocquin, and a few others were all who dared attend. The funeral paint was a caked and irritating whiteness on my face. The sheeting rain rivuleted the paint, staining the clothing with splotches of leprous white. I was young. I didn't understand. I felt no sorrow--you've heard that of children in my situation. My entire being was caught up in the minor discomforts: the chilling wetness, the crawling irritation of the funeral paint, the clinging sogginess of my clothing, and the heaviness of the mud caking my feet. All this drove away the greater pain. The two white-veiled carriages could have contained any of the unknown dead that had passed our home on the way to the gravepit. I cared not. The dirgepipes agonized on, the pipers looking petulant and casting angered glances at the clouds. I remember their cheeks puffed like blowtoads, and the pipes glistening with a sheen that was not varnish but water.

The two bodies that had been my mother and father were dumped over the cliff and went twisting and crashing down to scatter the half-bare skeletons beneath. The uproar sent the legions of carrionbirds into the air. The pipers wailed on, and the stench drove us back from the pit. The pit called Gehenah.

"Why do they burn Gehenah, m'Dame?" I asked a few weeks later at one of the quarterly burnings of the pit. The insurrection seemed to have quieted with the ebbing of the floodwaters. Jocquin and I had completed the Rites of Purification.

My grandmother had her filter over her face. The two of us stared past the lip of the cliff and down to where the flames charred the bone-white landscape.