Honored Path

Day of the Dead

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Kelava, Capital of Keova.

Common year: 2231

Compass Ambrose remembered her mother's love for the flower murals built for the Day of the Dead. The flower blankets depicted family members, religious icons and political figures. Shaped out of dozens of flowers, families draped them over raised surfaces and covered the ground before memorial stones. Odes to the dead.

She had no time to have one prepared for her mother. She couldn't attend to one, either.

Compass preferred the bouclé wreaths. Boucle were spheres of wicker or straw. Families hung them as offerings to the living and the dead, filling them with flowers and dried fruits. Jorga Cantle Ambrose scolded Compass as child with fervor for eating the adornment of the dead without consent.

Then, Jorga taught Compass and her twin sister Tessa to make the bouclé, each year, to adorn the graves. This year, in haste, Compass had to buy the wreath, simply adorn in fruits like pommels and ginka, but tied the red ribbon herself.

Her three-year deployment on the Adrian recently ended, and Compass had no place to stay on Keova if it weren't for Johnny.

In her haste, she had no flower offering either. Nor she could not attend to one as her mother had. When looking through her storage locker, Compass couldn't even find the katchina doll meant for her sister Tessa. She had no altar to display one on, either.

Cloth bags dangling from her wrists, Compass took the time to admire the flower shrines. She asked questions about the different flowers, rare flowers. Like the five-petal Moan flower, so rare it was said only to bloom in one location, high on the tallest mountain in the Waltham Mountain Range. She'd seen it a handful of times. The man who displayed the flower, in a shrine to his grandmother, a dead senator, scoffed at the notion.

"It's found in so many other places," he said, a glint to his eye Compass couldn't place.

This, the Day of the Dead, was a daylong affair, the first of three holy days on Keova's religious calendar. Businesses slowed today, some closing early so families could come together and pass on the stories to the next generation. To pass on the rituals as much as to pass on the names and the deeds of those past – a dream she hoped to take part in one day.

Yet, Compass knew without asking her father, she wouldbe the only member of their family to come here today. She grieved for a whole other reason.

Astoria, her elder half-sister by her father's first wife, was a child the last time she celebrated the Day of the Dead. Nearly thirty years after her abduction, she lived with her husband and son on distant Myra, remaining a stranger to Keova and the Day of the Dead. There was no secret she had been reconciled to her biological family. Though at a distance, she asked of her traditions. At Astoria's request, Compass added the name of her foster father to the wall of black marble delineating the Ambrose family.

The memorial park faced destruction in the last war. The marble wall was new, and bore only three names: those of both her father's wives, and her sister Tessa.

Esau, Astoria's twin brother and the titular first born son, never returned Compass' messages. And so, she acted the same.

Starting as high as she could reach, Compass wrote every name she could remember of the Ambrose family tree. In green wet chalk, she wrote name after name. Every grandparent, every aunt, uncle, even kissing cousin she could remember on all sides of the Ambrose name. Even babies, lost before they held names, she wrote 'Enta' as a placeholder.

Compass continued down the wall, until her green chalk wore out and she borrowed a piece of red wet chalk from a neighboring party. She returned the chalk when she finished.

Then did Compass open her bags and hung the boucle. It still stung that she purchased it, preferring to handmake it. Still, the frilly yellow and white Heidis bobbed in the wind. On either side of the family name, she hung the mandolin dream catchers. These she made of red and purple thread and stretched the fabric on metal hoops. She found the dream catchers in her storage boxes.

She made the sweet bread from scratch. Her mother's recipe that followed their family through the stars in the Keovan Diaspora. Compass returned the recipe to this world. The boldly baked brown loaf of bread had simple adornment of crusty sugar and a cross of bones. She couldn't find the bean curd dumplings her mother liked so well.

Compass took up the bread to make the traditional offerings, first to the north, and then to the south. She held the loaf up from the east to the west. Then she began tearing the loaf to bits to leave on the tray at the foot of the marble.

She felt his hands on her hips and Compass nearly reacted on the defense before Johnny said "Rosebud." She softened into his kiss on the back of her neck. He hadn't shaved and his beard was long past the prickling stage.

"It's beautiful," he said, sliding his fingers under her shirt.

"Thank you," she said.

"I don't remember your mother, but she would approve," Johnny said.

They settled on an empty part of a low wall encompassing the pool, breaking into the lunch Compass packed and nearly forgot. Already the park's ducks with their gold and silver feathers, feasted.

"My mother always said that this day was the day where the mouth of the grave was the closest to the living." Compass tossed a piece of bread away. "I feel no closer to the dead. Tessa shares no wisdom from the other side."

"You're thinking about the resolution," Johnny said, as if he could read her mind. Compass looked at him, not sure how to believe he couldn't read her mind. He kissed her. "Stop. What will be will be. Just be."

"Be I shall." Compass looked to the wall and back to her lover. "Can I write your wife's name on the wall?"

The sadness Compass knew so well returned to the brown-green of Johnny's eyes.

"Why not," he said, his voice betraying no hint of sadness at all.

Compass smiled, took Johnny by the hand, and took him back to the wall. She borrowed the piece of chalk again and gave it to Johnny. He hesitated, staring at the wall.

"I feel hypocritical," he said, turning to Compass. "Writing her name and forgetting the whole of my people?"

Compass touched his arm. "You aren't forgetting," she said. "My mother always said by remembering just one more name, you remember all that came before."

Still, Johnny hesitated, his fingers tensing around the piece of chalk. After a few long moments, Johnny wrote 'Shadra' at the bottom of the list. He stepped back, hesitated, then gave the chalk back to the woman Compass borrowed it from. Then he put his arm around Compass, and they stood quietly a few minutes longer, staring at the names on the wall.

Then they gathered up their things, joining the throngs of people on the processional out of the memorial park. Members of the crowd threw petals and bright powders in the air. Compass laughed, seeing Johnny drenched in red, green and blue pigments.

"This is a real leather jacket."

"It will clean," Compass said, brushing what she could from the surface of the jacket.

"You will buy me a new one when it doesn't."

She pursed her lips and shook the red pigment from her hair. "A little much," she finally agreed. She looked at Johnny. "Do I look like one of Buta's terra cotta soldiers?"

Johnny grabbed her wrist and kissed her cheek. "Buta had no women in his army."