6
The Martyr
For Eo, I do not react. I am anger. I am hatred. Everything. But I
hold her gaze even as they take her away and t the noose around
her neck. I look up at Bridge and he quietly takes the gag from my
mouth. My teeth will never be the same. Tears build in the Tinpot’s
eyes. I leave him and stumble numbly to the bottom of the scaold
so Eo can see me as she dies. This is her choice. I will be with her to
the end. My hands shake. Sobs come from the crowd behind me.
“The last words, to whom will you speak them before justice is
done?” Podginus asks her. He drips sympathy for the camera.
I ready for her to say my name, but she does not. Her eyes never
leave mine, but she calls her sister out. “Dio.” The word trembles in
the air. She is frightened now. I do not react as Dio climbs the
scaold stairs; I do not understand, but I will not be jealous. This is
not about me. I love her. And her choice is made. I do not
understand, but I will not let her die knowing anything but my love.
Ugly Dan has to help Dio climb the gallows; she’s stumbling and
senseless as she leans close to her sister. Whatever is said, I do not
hear; but Dio lets loose a moan that will haunt me forever. She looks
at me as she weeps. What did my wife tell her? Women are crying.
Men wipe their eyes. They have to stun Dio to pull her away, but
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she clings to Eo’s feet, weeping. There is a nod from the
ArchGovernor, though he doesn’t even care enough to watch as, like
my father, Eo is hanged.
“Live for more,” she mouths to me. She reaches into her pocket
and pulls out the haemanthus I gave her. It is smashed and at.
Then loudly she screams to all those gathered, “Break the chains!”
The trapdoor beneath her feet opens. She falls, and for one
moment, her hair hangs suspended about her head, a ourish of red.
Then her feet scramble at air and she falls. Her slim throat gags.
Eyes open so wide. If only I could save her from this. If only I could
protect her; but the world is cold and hard to me. It does not bend
as I wish it to bend. I am weak. I watch my wife die and my
haemanthus fall from her hand. The camera records it all. I rush
forward to kiss her ankle. I cradle her legs. I will not let her suer.
On Mars there is not much gravity, so you have to pull the feet to
break the neck. They let the loved ones do it.
Soon, there is no sound, not even the creaking of the rope.
My wife is too light.
She was only just a girl.
Then the thumping of the Fading Dirge begins. Fists on chests.
Thousands. Fast, like a racing heartbeat. Slower. A beat a second. A
beat every ve. Every ten. Then never again, and the mournful mass
fades away like dust held in the palm as the old tunnels wail with
deep winds.
And the Golds, they y away.
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Eo’s father, Loran, and Kieran sit by my door through the night.
They say they are there to keep me company. But they are there to
guard me, to ensure I do not die. I want to die. Mother dresses my
wound with silk my sister, Leanna, stole from the Webbery.
“Keep the nervenucleic dry, or you will scar.”
What are scars? How little they matter. Eo will not see them, so
why should I care? She will not run her hand along my back. She
will never kiss my wounds.
She is gone.
I lie in our bed on my back so I can feel the pain and forget my
wife. But I cannot forget. She hangs even now. In the morning, I will
pass her on the way to the mines. Soon she will stink and soon she
will rot. My beautiful wife shone too bright to live long. I still feel
her neck cracking against my hands; they tremble now in the night.
There is a hidden tunnel I carved in my bedroom long ago in the
rock so I could sneak out as a child. I use it now. I leave out the
secret path, climbing stealthily down from my home, so my kin
never see me slip away in the low light.
It is quiet in the township. Quiet except for the HC, which makes
my wife die to a soundtrack. They intended to show the futility of
disobedience. And they succeed in that, but there is something else
in the video. They show my ogging, and Eo’s, and they play her
song throughout. And as she dies, they play it again, which seems to
give the video the wrong eect. Even if she were not my wife, I see
a martyr, a young girl’s pretty song silenced by the rope of cruel
men.
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Then the HC ashes black for several moments. It has never gone
to black before. And Octavia au Lune comes back on with the same
old message. It almost seems as though someone has hacked into the
broadcast, because my wife ickers onto the giant screen again.
“Break the chains!” she cries. Then she’s gone and the screen is
black. It crackles. The image comes back. She cries it again. Black
once more. Standard programming goes up, then it cuts to her
screaming one last time and then there’s me pulling her legs. Then
static.
The streets are quiet as I make my way to the Common. The
nightshift will be returning soon. Then I hear a noise and a man
steps into the street in front of me. My uncle’s face leers at me from
the shadows. A single bulb hangs over his head, illuminating the
ask in his hand and his tattered red shirt.
“You are your father’s son, little bastard. Stupid and vain.”
My hands clench. “Come to stop me, Uncle?”
He grunts. “Couldn’t stop your father from killing his bloody self.
And he was a better bloodyman than you. More restraint in him.”
I step forward. “I don’t need your permission.”
“Nay, you little squabber, you don’t.” He runs a hand through his
hair. “Don’t do what you’re gonna do, though. It’ll break your
mother; you might think she didn’t know you’d slip out. She did.
Told me so. Said you were gonna go die like my brother, like your
girl.”
“If Mother knew, she would have stopped me.”
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“Nah. She lets us men make our own mistakes. But this ain’t what
your girl would’ve wanted.”
I point a nger at my uncle. “You don’t know a thing. Not a thing
about what she wanted.” Eo said I wouldn’t understand being a
martyr. I will show her I do.
“Righto,” he says with a shrug. “I’ll walk with you, then, since
your head is full of rocks.” He chuckles. “We Lambdas do love the
noose.”
He tosses me his ask and I fall into tentative step beside him.
“I tried to talk your father out of his little protest, you know. Told
him words and dance mean as much as dust. Tried squaring up with
him. I squabbed that one up. He laid me down cold.” He throws a
slow right. “Comes a time in life when you know a man has his
mind set and it’s an insult to gainsay.”
I drink from his ask and hand it back. The swill tastes strange
and thicker than usual. Strange. He makes me nish the ask.
“Your’s set?” he asks, tapping his head. “Course it is. I forget, I
taught you how to dance.”
“Stubborn as a pitviper, wasn’t that how you put it?” I say quietly,
allowing a little smile.
I walk in silence for a moment with my uncle. He puts a hand on
my shoulder. A sob wants to come out of my chest. I swallow it.
“She left me,” I whisper. “Just left me.”
“Musta had a reason. Not a dumb girl, that one.”
The tears come as I enter the Common. My uncle takes me in a
one-armed hug and kisses the crown of my head. It’s all he can
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oer. He’s not a man made for aection. His face is pale and
ghostly. Thirty-ve and so old, so tired. A scar twists his upper lip.
Gray streaks his thick hair.
“Tell them hello for me in the vale,” he says into my ear, his
beard coarse against my neck. “Give my brothers a toast and my
wife a kiss, specially Dancer.”
“Dancer?”
“You’ll know him. And if you see your gramp and gran, tell them
we still dance for them. They won’t be long alone.” He walks away,
then pauses and without turning says, “Break the chains. Hear?”
“Hear.”
He leaves me there in the Common with my swaying wife. I know
the cameras watch me from the can as I walk up the gallows. It is
metal, so the stairs don’t creak. She hangs like a doll. Her face is
pale as chalk and her hair shifts slightly as the ventilators rasp
above.
When the rope has been cut with the slingBlade I stole from the
mines, I grab its frayed end and lower her down gently. I take my
wife in my arms and together wend our way from the square to the
Webbery. A nightshift is working their nal hours. The women
watch in silence as I carry Eo to the ventilation duct. There I see
Leanna, my sister. Tall and quiet like my mother, she watches me
with hard eyes, but she does nothing. None of the women do. They
will not gossip about where my wife is buried. They will not speak,
not even for the chocolate given to spies. Only ve souls have been
buried in three generations—someone always hangs for it.
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This is the ultimate act of love. Eo’s silent requiem.
Women begin to cry, and as I pass they reach to touch Eo’s face,
to touch mine and help me open the ventilation duct. I drag my wife
through the tight metal space, taking her to where we made love
beneath the stars, where she told me her plans and I did not listen. I
hold her lifeless body and hope her soul sees me in a place where
we were happy.
I dig a hole near the base of a tree. My hands, covered with the
dirt of our land, are red like her hair as I take her hand and kiss her
wedding band. I place the outer bulb of the haemanthus atop her
heart and take the inner and put it near my own. Then I kiss her lips
and bury her. But I sob before I can nish. I uncover her face and
kiss her again and hold my body to hers till I see a red sun rising
through the articial bubbleroof. The colors of the place scald my
eyes and I cannot stop my tears. When I pull away, I see my
headband poking from her pocket. She made it for me to take my
sweat. I give it my tears now and take it with me.
Kieran strikes me in the face when he sees me back in the township.
Loran cannot speak, while Eo’s father slumps against a wall. They
think they failed me. I hear Eo’s mother’s cries. My mother says
nothing as she makes me a meal. I don’t feel well. It’s hard to
breathe. Leanna comes in late and helps her, kissing me on the head
as I eat, lingering long enough to smell my hair. I must use one
hand as I move the food from plate to mouth. My mother holds my
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other hand between her calloused palms. She watches it instead of
me, as though remembering when it was small and soft and
wondering how it became so hard.
I nish the meal just as Ugly Dan comes. My mother does not
leave the table as I’m pulled away. Her eyes stay xed on where my
hand lay. I think she believes if she does not look up, this will not
happen. Even she can only bear so much.
They hang me before a full assembly at nine in the morning. I’m
dizzy for some reason. My heart feels funny, slow. I hear the
ArchGovernor’s words to my wife echo.
“Is that all your strength?”
My people sing, we dance, we love. That is our strength. But we
also dig. And then we die. Seldom do we get to choose why. That
choice is power. That choice has been our only weapon. But it is not
enough.
They give me my last words. I call Dio up. Her eyes are bloodshot
and swollen. She’s a fragile thing, so unlike her sister.
“What were Eo’s last words?” I ask her, though my mouth moves
slowly, oddly.
She glances back to Mother, who nally followed but now shakes
her head. There is something they are not telling me. Something
they don’t want me to know. A secret held back even though I am
about to die.
“She said she loved you.”
I don’t believe her, but I smile and kiss her forehead. She can’t
handle more questions. And I’m dizzy. Hard to speak.
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“I’ll tell her you say hello.”
I do not sing. I am made for other things.
My death is senseless. It is love.
But Eo was right, I don’t understand this. This is not my victory.
This is selsh. She told me to live for more. She wanted me to ght.
But here I am, dying despite what she wanted. Giving up because of
the pain.
I panic as suicides do when they realize their folly.
Too late.
I feel the door beneath me open. My body falls. Rope ays my
neck. My spine creaks. Needles lance my lumbar. Kieran stumbles
forward. Uncle Narol shoves him away. With a wink, he touches my
feet and pulls.
I hope they do not bury me.
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