Blight

Chapter 4: Sacrifice

Today is Atonement

I wake up first as usual, though today I won't be gathering sweetshrooms. It's the one day in every six when I stay with my family. Though it's still very dark I can just make out their silhouettes around me, breathing softly in the early morning. 

Mother and Father lie beyond the cold hotstone, their blanket-wrapped forms like lumps of coal. My mind wanders to memories of each as I watch them sleep. Mother with her stern but loving green eyes, her frizzy red hair so much like my own, only streaked with gray. And Father, whose black hair and beard can never quite be distinguished from each-other, both braided in a mostly ineffective attempt to keep out stone dust. Father's blue eyes, like Mother's, are always kind, but somewhere deep inside they're also very sad. They've been sad for as long as I can remember. Even when he smiles.

Derrik lies next to me on the straw-covered stone opposite our wooden door. Only a few spikes of his dusty black hair poke out of the threadbare blanket.

I smile at my brother. He's adorable asleep, though I'll never tell him that.

The hotstone in the center of our shack is where we make our meals, except for midmeal which everyone eats at the quarry. I push the warming button on its side before slipping out the door to gather water for firstmeal.

Each family cave has a small well, filled every Atonement day by workers from Cavern A. Though everyone says Cavern A is the most blessed cavern -- being closest to Bask -- their workers don't look much different than we do, except that their rags are blue instead of brown. In fact, the color of our clothes (B'ers wear red and C'ers wear gray) is the only way I can tell who's not from Cavern D.

The well is almost empty -- the A'ers don't fill it until after Atonement -- but I manage to scrape enough into our family pot to make a decent firstmeal. 

Mother rolls over just as I walk back through the door. She watches me for a moment, worry in her green eyes.

"You aren't making tea again, are you?" she asks as I set the pot on the red-hot stone.

I shake my head. "I ran out of leaves."

"Thank Bask," Mother says. "You have to stop bringing contraband into our home, Squire. One of these days you'll be caught and we'll all be punished."

As the water begins to boil, I empty our last pack of six-day rations into the pot.

"You don't have any sweetshrooms to add by any chance, do you?"

I smile at Father as he sits up behind Mother. 

"Don't encourage her," Mother says. She sighs. "Oh, it's futile. You two are going to be the death of us all."

Father doesn't reply, his questioning eyes still on me.

"You know I do!" I answer with a return grin. 

I pull back my blankets to reveal the sweetshrooms I always save for my own family. Picking a few out of the small pile, I throw them into the water with the rationed mushrooms from Cavern C.

"Mmm!" Father rubs his stomach. "NOW it smells right!"

Mother snorts, then turns her attention to Derrik, combing his hair through her fingers as he rubs the sleep from his eyes.

***

"Wind and willows. Willows and wind. The wind in the willows blows clear and cool."

Grandfather's strange words echo through my mind as we walk to the quarry for Atonement. He's been gone for three cycles now, but I think of his lessons often.