The Humanarium.

Chapter 7: A friends regret

Chapter 4

My illness has started to get the better of me. If I can afford the treatment then I can continue but I need a different approach than just studying these creatures.

The collapse of the boulder in the quarry was a disaster the likes of which no one had seen before. It claimed the lives of fifteen fit and healthy men and injured five more. It took three whole light and dark cycles lit by donated liquid fire torches to extract the crushed and maimed bodies. Men and women had worked around the clock to free the lifeless forms from the dusty rock strewn heap left over. Afterwards a meeting of elders was held and it was found that too many bore holes had been made in process of extracting the ore from within.

Troy limped slow but determinably up the grass mound upon which the fifteen dead men lay side by side. He carried a bow and a quiver of arrows in his bandaged hands. He wiped tears away and then peered down at the row of bodies. He knew them all. He walked the length of the row until he came to Harl. His friend's lifeless face had been cleaned of blood, but the cuts still seemed to bleed after death.

He'd managed to pull his friend from the hole quickly after the initial collapse, but it had not been fast enough. The rock had crumbled around both of them; Troy had sustained severe injuries to his right leg and arms, but Harl had just slumped lifeless on the ground before him. When the healers had come they had just shaken their heads and covered Harl with a pale sheet, before carrying Troy away on a stretcher.

Troy knelt down next to Harl.

'I thought you might like to take these,' he said, kneeling down and looping the bow and quiver over Harl's motionless shoulders. 'I'm so sorry,' he said, tears falling onto Harl's ceremonial lifting dress. 'I wish I'd been quicker when it happened. The elders have exonerated you and me from any previous convictions but it won't help now.'

He stood once more; pain, physical and emotional, crossed his face as he rose. He took a final look at his friend. 'I hope now you will find the woman of your dreams,' and with that he turned and made Sightwards heading for the Golden Spear.

It was not long before the God came to lift the dead ones, attracted by the usual pyre set on the hilltop to signal death in the world. Before the use of the pyre it would be every gifting cycle that the Gods lifted the deceased, the hand descending down from no sight to scoop up the bodies. The Elders decided after several corpses had decomposed over forty whole cycles that getting the bodies lifted before they rotted was a priority. So the pyre was lit and nearly every time the lift happened swiftly. Troy stood at the bottom of memorial hill looking Sightwards. The God was overseeing the world and had spotted the call to lift the dead. It seemed that when the one true God looked in, that the world froze. All the people could not help but be in awe at the size and power before them, this time it seemed the God would reach in right over the land instead of from no-Sight. Troy felt a slight shudder as the world opening lifted and the God peered in putting its hand into the world within.

The God's hand cast a shadow over Troy as it reached inside. The hand hesitated as it neared the fire, and then moved around it as though to avoid the flames. Troy frowned. Why would the God be afraid of the fire? There was no way that the flames could possible harm it, but that hesitation? Perhaps it just didn't want to knock the pyre off the hill?

The hand hovered over the bodies before lowering and partially grasping the first, it slid along the line, each of the bodies being scooped up one by one until all were heaped in the half closed fist. The grass underneath the bodies was churned up by the man-sized fingers. As the hand rose, he could see that Harl's arms hung limply over the side. The hand was halfway to the top heading Sightwards over the town when Troy saw Harl's arm upwards and the hand seemed to grasp at thin air.

Horror shot through Troy so sharply that he stood frozen for a split second. Alive! He was still alive. 'No! Wait, stop!' he shouted as loud as his lungs allowed. Despite the pain in his leg, Troy ran after the hand screaming for the God to stop, but his leg gave way and he tumbled to the ground. Despair flooded him. Harl was alive, but yet again Troy had failed to save him.