The Nadir of the Labyrinth

by Christopher DeRosa

Table of Contents

Part 6: The Farmer’s Tale

I opened my eyes to the stunned gazes of my companions.

“So that’s why you’re here to end him. Not for revenge, but mercy,” Adrian said, his gruff rumble softened.

“I just can’t let him suffer anymore. It’s my fault that he’s imprisoned here, that he’s forced to kill,” I said.

“Maybe the magic could be undone? He could be restored?” Penelope offered.

I looked up at her and shook my head. “You know as well as I do, Penelope, that some things cannot be undone, even by magic.” Her eyes widened and she looked away, unable to meet my gaze.

“It wasn’t your fault, Elena. No more than what happened to my father was your fault,” Adrian said. He took a deep breath and began to turn the knife over in his hands. “All this talk about escaping this place has me wondering if I’m wrong. I came down here intending to die, I think you did, too. You can move on from all this, but I don’t think I can. I just can’t walk away.” He sighed.

“He’s right,” Sophia said. She looked right at me, but not with her usual glare. “You can’t blame yourself for that. Terrible people will do terrible things, but you tried to stop it.” Her voice was soft, each syllable barely perceptible.

“May I tell my story? Of why I’m here?” she asked and looked into the eyes of the three of us. “I want to tell it before I end up like the silent man. He didn’t even have the chance to. I just want to say it so... at least if I can’t get out, one of you will remember it.”

“Of course you can,” I said. Adrian and Penelope nodded.

Sophia took a moment, a deep breath to compose herself. She bit back a sob, and we waited for her, gave her the time and space she needed. In her own time, she began her tale.

The Farmer’s Tale

I grew up next to a potter’s field, a hole in the ground where they throw the corpses of all the people too poor to afford graves. The gravediggers would come in the early morning to tear up a new hole in the earth. I would always see them when I was out early to feed the cows. That always meant they would bring the carts later. The big wooden carts full of bodies would come rolling up the hill around the time my mother would call my father and me in from the fields for food.

The bodies were all tossed one on top of the other. There was nothing to cover them, and the sun beat down on their blank faces. The gravediggers would roll the carts up to the new hole and tip it back. Just hurl them down into a pit and forget about them. The town priests would come around and read a passage from the holy books every now and then. At least whenever the gravediggers brought a full cart.

Young people and old, all went down into those pits. My mom and dad never seemed to mind; they said it was good for the crops, made them grow faster. I could never stand it. I never got used to the smell. In the high summer, when they brought up carts full of folks from the sea towns who caught the wasting, the whole farm smelled like rot. I would walk the field for hours to get far enough away that I couldn’t smell it, but I never could. I’d reach the fence that marked the edge and could still smell the rot.

Whenever the gravediggers brought their carts, I would have nightmares that night. I’d dream that I was down in one of those holes, but I wasn’t dead. I was stuck down there with all the corpses, but I couldn’t climb out. The gravediggers had made the holes too deep. I would scream and scream for someone to get me out, but nobody did.

Then they started to shovel the dirt down on me until I couldn’t see or breathe. I woke up screaming, woke up my mother and father. It took them a long time to calm me down. Sometimes if my father saw the gravediggers on the road in the morning before I did, he’d have me work inside on the spinning wheel or with my mother to prepare food, but I always heard the squeak of the cart’s wheels as it came up the road, filled with all those dead, empty faces.

Last year, the wasting came further inland from the sea than usual. Mostly it was only sailors who caught it, but my father said the sea winds were strong that winter and carried it up to us on the farms. We huddled around the fire, shivering despite the heat from the flames. We coughed and hacked until blood ran over our lips and our lungs felt like they were full and heavy like our cow’s udders. My father died first; he’d insisted on working even after he got sick. My mother stayed with me as long as she could, but soon it was just me in our farmhouse.

Nobody came to check on us; nobody even knew my father and mother were dead. I couldn’t stand the thought of the gravediggers tossing them into one of those holes. I didn’t want to see their glazed eyes stare back up at me. It was hard enough to watch them start to fall apart where I had left them on their bed.

I took a shovel and scratched out two holes in the frozen ground out behind our house. It took days while my head burned with fever and my spit ran red but, finally, I was able to bury them. Not like the people they leave in the potter’s field, but a real burial. I even found two rocks from the edge of our field for markers. Then I lay in my bed and waited to die. I don’t know why I didn’t. My fever broke, my lungs emptied over the next day, and I was alive.

That didn’t matter much, though. I couldn’t run our farm by myself. I had to sell our cows and what few crops I could raise myself for when the taxmen came and, even then, it wasn’t enough. They took everything. Our farm was gone, and I had no home.

They found the graves I had dug out behind the farmhouse, and the gravediggers dug up the bodies. I watched them do it. I watched them put what was left of my mom and dad onto their cart. I followed them as they wheeled their card over to a freshly dug hole and tip it over. Thump, thump went all the bodies into the hole.

I sat there crying as I watched all those people tumble into the hole. It reeked of death but, when the gravediggers were done, I walked right up to the edge and looked down. Right then I knew I had to get my mom and dad out, I climbed down to them. Except I couldn’t tell where their bodies were, they must have been buried deep under the others, even though they were just bones now. They probably scattered all over the place.

When I reached up to pull myself out, my tears were mixed with grave dirt. Then I realized I couldn’t reach up; I couldn’t jump up, I was trapped in that awful hole and this time I wouldn’t wake up. I started screaming, just as in my dream. The gravediggers came back with their horrible beak masks and laughed.

I was sure they were just going to throw dirt down on me. They said something about a little graverobber — I couldn’t make out most of it — but they threw down a rope and pulled me out. As they tried to drag me away, I bit them, kicked at them. I tried to claw my way back to my parents. I didn’t matter to me if I had tampered with the dead or broken the old laws. I hadn’t stolen anything, not that there was anything to steal there, but they dragged me to the king. As we waited on the line of common folk who had come for an audience, they bound my hands to keep me still and gagged me to keep me from crying out.

So much from that day is foggy, I can’t remember it clearly. The image of the king wracked with laughter up on this throne will not leave my mind. I pleaded at first, begged for him to let me bury my parents. He paid me no mind as the gravediggers explained what I had done. He didn’t even notice me until I accused him, blamed him for letting my parents rot in that hole. I have seen rabid dogs put down around the farm. The look he gave me reminded me of those dogs. There was nothing but contempt there. The king told me that if I liked to root around in holes in the ground so much, he knew of one that I would love.

Proceed to part 7...

Copyright © 2022 by Christopher DeRosa

Proceed to Challenge 945...