Kiss Me, Curse Me - By Kate Shay Page 0,13

her cry. She cried for him. He heard his name.

“Coreen . . .”

Something brushed passed him. Is it her? My love.

“Coreen . . .” Her name wouldn’t travel in that place, though just for a second, he thought he saw her, out past the density.

Ahanu came to just for a second then fell back again.

“Of dust and bones.”

His grandfather sat before the raging fire, muttering in tongues, waving his hand to the sky and pointing at the star systems. Ahanu couldn’t understand yet, being just three years old, but he knew then that what his grandfather said was the way it would be and the way it had always been.

“Sleep my son.” His mother whispered as she brushed her lips against his cheek. He shuddered under her soft intent.

It was love in the simplest, purest form.

The fire burned before them as he faded away in her arms under the stars mixed in with the words of the ages and the light songs of his people—harmony is the weave beneath the web.

It was the uncomfortable sharpness pressing into every inch of his body that finally brought him to, but the sharpness of what? He tried pressing up but his hands gave way as the ground moved with a hollow scrape. He grasped at the hard stuff beneath him, clenching at some long cylindrical object. Lifting it up, he realized that it was a bone. A bed of bones to sleep in? It was sickening as he really saw the thing with its cracks.

There was a microscopic light source, but from where exactly he couldn’t tell. It illuminated the burial chamber that he was in. He kicked his legs and pushed the bones aside till he could sit on proper ground that was cold and damp and made up of the deceased. He was in a foot deep, piles and piles of skulls and bones and old rotten sinews. The smell burned in his throat and nose. It was all wrong, this place. My people’s dead are not buried in this manner. He knew this to be true.

Ahanu stood at the depressed center of the ongoing expanse. He could see no end to the spectacle as he searched through the dark. He knew in a single horrifying moment that he was lost somewhere in the belly of the mountain, and he cringed.

***

“Goddammit!” Patty yelled. “Slow down a second. I’m going to drop this thing and then the two of us are going off this here cliff.” Doug, who was in front, stopped so Patty could steady his grip on the boat above them. “How’d I get stuck with you again anyway? Look at this big group, and I’m stuck with your ass.”

Doug didn’t say a word as his stomach shrunk at the sight of the drop off. “I stopped, all right?”

“Okay, okay, move on.”

The men trickled down the side of the overhang, like a line of ants hauling debris back to their hill. It was tricky business as Patty felt his age catching up with him a bit. It was enough of a distraction to get his mind off the morbid task ahead.

Being last in line with ding bat, hadn’t been on his list of things to do either as the two of them fell behind.

“Pick it up son. Come on now, pick it up,” pressed Patty.

“You want it fast, you want it slow . . . Which?”

“Goddamn. Did your father not teach you a thing about pace son? Keep the pace, stick with the crowd, or we’ll be left behind. It’s more dangerous.”

“I’m confused.” Doug readjusted his grip as his fingers began to ache under the weight.

“I can tell.”

“Look here, okay? If we’re clear on all sides, pick it up. Slow down on the sketchy parts, okay? It’s simple.”

Doug nodded, even though he didn’t understand. All those years of school and his teachers had just been letting him advance on—were tired of holding him back and dealing with him.

“I know, I’m slow. I’m sorry.”

Patty shook his head, “Your father let you off with too much, son. You’re not slow, you’re lazy. There’s a difference. You just think you’re slow, or you’ve been told that for too long, and now it’s become your excuse.”

“Maybe,” said Doug, but he knew differently.

Halfway down the trail, the party ahead was not visible to them anymore. Doug was tiring, and Patty was feeling the heat.

“Can we rest just—”

“Yes . . . fine . . . put her down slow,” Patty interrupted, out of breath himself.

Carefully they