The people moved aimlessly across the compacted desert. If you ignored their humanity, it was like watching Brownian motion on a two-dimensional surface. Strangely captivating to watch.
Everyone was naked. Most appeared over the age of thirty. Some appeared gaunt and underweight. Some appeared buff and in the height of health. Most were distinguished by being indistinguishable. If I stayed still long enough, I could find some feature that stood out from the collective average.
A strange moan came from them. “Amber.” Some said it and wept. Some said it and were angered. Some showed regret, some showed hope. “Amber.”
One of the people bumped into me. “Amber?” He excused himself with the repetition of the word and started to wander off in a different direction.
I grabbed the man’s arm gently. “What about Amber? Who is she?”
He stopped, looked down at my hand touching his arm, and stood still a moment as he processed the sensation. “You’re… warm. How are you warm? Do you have…” His eyes brightened as he started looking me over.
I took the hint and lowered my voice. “Do I have amber? No.” His face fell. “But why is it important? You say I am warm. You are the same temperature as the ground underneath us.”
“Don’t say it too loud then. If they think you have… they will swarm you and tear you apart looking for it.”
I released him and tried to stand with the same indifferent stance as everyone else. Kind of hard to blend in, though. Everyone’s hue was washed out with a corpse gray covering for one. And everyone was naked. I’m in my black clothes, cloak, and hat. And I’m warm. Play dead, indeed.
I nodded. “So… why?”
He shuffled away but motioned for me to follow him. We wandered apparently aimlessly through the crowd until we were at the edge of the cloistered valley and the gathering it held. Stern cliffs kept everyone in place.
“We’ll stand out here.”
“They won’t care. They don’t see more than two feet in front of them, and can’t hear us if we keep our voices down. You’re alive. What are you doing here?”
“You’re dead. Was about to ask you the same thing.”
“We’re… under judgement. Once this valley was full of trees. Pine trees. Taller than the cliffs, if I remember right. Which I may not. There was flowing water from springs here and there, and everything was alive and green. Except for us. When we were placed here, we were already dead. There was the trees and the springs and the wind that played through the forest.” His face colored some as he became lost in his memories.
“We were under judgement because… because…” He turned his face away as he tried to remember. “I forgot. We did bad things and we had to serve our time in the forest.” He looked back at the empty valley. There was only compacted silt and the multitudes of the dead that kept it level. Nothing was growing there now. Nothing could grow there now. There was no trace of the springs that could have kept ancient pines alive.
He turned back to me with a pained look on his face. I asked him about the forest. He smiled and the memory brought color back to his cheeks.
“Trees. Taller than we could imagine. It never rained, never got hot, never froze. It was always on the late edge of spring. And us wandering among them.” He sighed. “Our task was doable then. It required us to be patient, though. We were to scratch at the trees to release their resin and wait for it to become amber. Once it became amber, we could buy our release from here and move on to whatever comes for the dead after here.”
“That is impossible for the living but very doable for the dead. What happened? Where have the trees gone?”
“We were impatient then. We still measured time like we were living. It takes millions of years for resin to become amber. Copal is easy to counterfeit, just get a good gunk of pine sap and let it dry out for a year or two. But amber, real amber, takes a mindset to nuture we did not have coming in.”
“They… we… grew impatient. No telling how long we were here before the first tree was ripped apart. Could have been the same day. Could have been thousands of years. I don’t know. Night never comes here but the sun is never seen. Why wait for a tree to exude a bit of resin, when you can release it all at once, right? So they… we… came together and collectively pulled apart the tree, splinter by splinter.”
“We had no tools but our hands and our teeth, and the heavens watched us do it. When the first tree was turned into broken pieces, there was only a little bit of resin for our efforts. Not enough for everyone, so they fought over it.”
He was gesturing with his left hand. I noticed he kept his right hand gripped in a tight fist and always lowered. “Is that when you found a piece of hardened resin for your own?”
He lost all his color and held his right hand behind him. “… MINE!”
I gestured for him to be quiet. “I don’t want your resin. I want the story. But you have to tell me all of it, even the parts where you are guilty.”
He slowly brought his hand back in front of him. He opened his grip to reveal a small drop of amber. A beautiful hue of dark and translucent umber. It was as small as a drop of water. “It has grown smaller over time. I think I’m compacting it by squeezing so hard.”
I nodded. “Don’t bring it near me. My body heat will warm it and release its scent. I don’t want to find out if the dead can smell better than they can see.”
He closed his grip again and looked nervously around us. The rest of the milling dead continued to wander ignorant of us. He relaxed a bit.
“It didn’t come from the tree we took down. It came from one of the trees I picked at proper. It used to be a larger chunk, but when it was found out, they tore it apart to try and keep it for themselves. I managed to pinch off a piece of resin in the fight and come away with it. I figured any piece of amber was good, and that it didn’t have to be the largest one.”
“They ate it! It wasn’t enough to have in their hands. To make sure no one else could take it from them, what they stole, they ate! Swallowed whole! But what they ate, they could not force back up. And so they destroyed the very thing they needed to present.”
“That’s when they went after the other trees. At first it was just a small desperate group. Surely we had learned by what happened to the first tree, right? But when other trees started making the resin, they were torn apart as well. And, soon, everyone was tearing down all the trees.”
He lowered his head and sighed empty tears. “Including me. If I stayed away, they would know it was because I had my own amber forming and then they would tear me apart to get to it even if I had swallowed it like the others. So the only way I had a chance at leaving, was to help them destroy their chances. Forgive me.”
The flat valley gave no hint there were tree stumps anywhere. No variation to the ground. “What you guys couldn’t tear apart, you ground down by your wandering. The debris choked up the springs and sealed them.” He cried as he nodded. “But, what about those that had swallowed the amber. You said they were torn apart. The amber was at least recovered, right?”
“No! Anything we swallowed was undone. I watched one of us swallow a piece the size of my fist! If he were living, he would have choked! Just… GULP! Gone! When they tore him apart, they found his stomach to have been dry and dessicated. Like the piece never went into his gut. What ever we eat, doesn’t exist anymore.”
I’ve been in enough realms of the dead to accept this without question. “And he gradually pulled his strewn pieces back together again and reassembled himself, right?”
“Yea. It was fun to watch the first dozen times. Now, it’s a reminder that we have condemned ourselves twice over.”
“But you have it. That’s a real piece of it. Genuine. Why are you still here?”
He opened his fist and looked at the tiny bauble again. “I… I don’t know… I…” He started crying. The lack of moisture only amplified his pain. “I don’t deserve to leave. I helped them doom themselves. Again. I…”
“What if I were to tell you, that you can leave. And that if your guilt is the only thing stopping you, there is a place where you can release it at last. I understand now why I was sent here.” I cupped his cold face. “I am a Boneburner. A type of escort. I can bring you to a place I call the Boneyard. It sounds grisly, but the fires there are not to punish. But to release. You have fulfilled the terms of this place, now let me take you away.”
“My amber!”
“Will remain here. It is not a part of your identity, not a part of who you are. It is a token that will be left behind for the next one to raise their head and realize what they have done. As long as you hoard it, I can not take you away. You have to let it go.”
He looked back at the churning mob. We only stood twenty feet away from the mass of people, yet they were still unknowing of what was passing. “Do I have to hold the amber in my hand to leave?”
“Put it down on the ground and let me check.” He placed it at my feet. I took his face with both hands and concentrated on the Boneyard. I could feel the Ravens confirming the way was open. “No. You just have to be willing to go with me. Apparently, you fulfilled the terms of this place by having the amber.”
He pulled back and picked up the amber. “Okay. Stay right here. Don’t go anywhere, please. I want to pass this on… I hope he is still awake enough to understand.” He backed away from me then bent down and grabbed a handful of silt. He rubbed the silt on all the places I had touched him. Scrubbing away the warmth and scent of me, he did not stop until he appeared to be made of silt himself. Taking on the dead man shuffle, he reentered the crowd and quickly left my sight.
Was it minutes or hours? I don’t know. He was right, time can not be measured here. From the throng he emerged slowly. A second individual shuffled soon behind him. Where the first man was now animated and fluid, the second looked like barely warmed death.
“Amber….”
The first man’s face grimaced at the tone of the second. Silently, he took his precious bauble and pressed it into the palm of his friend. He studied the unblinking eyes for any hint of wakefulness. When he released his grip, the amber fell to the ground.
“Maybe it’s too cold for him to register. Give it to me for a second. Just enough to make it warmer than everything else here.” The first man picked up the bauble and placed it in my hand. I rubbed and breathed on the piece. I did not realize how cold this valley was until I tried to warm up the amber. Once I felt it start to be warm, I gave it back to the first man. He quickly tucked it back in the palm of his fellow.
“Am…be…r?” The second fellow gripped the bauble, almost pulling the first man’s fingers off his hand as he quickly lifted his prize to his face. “Warmmmm……”
“Amber. I have… amber…” The eyes blinked, and some color returned to the dead corneas as they turned to the first man. “You… You gave me amber. My friend… I had forgotten….”
“Check him! Can he leave with me?” I reached out and touched the second man. He yelped slightly at the sudden heat touching him. The distant Ravens refused him passage through me, however.
“No. He has not fulfilled the terms of this place yet. It seems he’ll have to keep the amber on his person for some time. I don’t know how long, or what the trigger is. I’m sorry.” I withdrew my hand from the face of the second man. He raised his own hand to where mine was in wonder.
“Okay.” I could see the struggle within himself plainly. “I still don’t feel I deserve to go. But I know that if I don’t take this chance, I will never get another one.” I nodded in agreement. “Hey, buddy. Don’t tell anyone you have the amber, okay. Let it get cold in your hand before you go back to them, if you go back at all, okay! I don’t know if I’ll see you again, but I’ll keep the hope that I do. I’ll try to send someone back for you when it’s time. So keep that piece tight! And don’t say a word!”
His friend continued the slow process of waking up. My instinct told me we could not afford to wait for the process to be complete. “Hey. We go now, or I go alone.”
“Bye… Friend…” The second man was smiling now. He gripped the amber tightly and waved with the straining fist.
“Okay.” There is not enough water in all the worlds to give the first man the tears he wanted to shed. “Let’s go.”
I embraced the first man in a tight hug and willed us to go to the Boneyard. A moment of disorientation turned around us and then the scent of smoke welcomed us. What had been a complete and ambulatory corpse before was now a few broken long bones and the top half of a partially mineralized skull.
There was not much of him left to burn.
As the Ravens surrounded me to see what I had brought, I dug into an already burning pyre to make room for the bones. The giant birds helped me by handing the bones to me one by one in an order than made sense to them.
The broken skull was the last to be placed. The exterior gleamed like opal, but the inside of the cavity was covered with a black tarry substance. Guilt.
The fires took to it as soon as I reached into the pyre to place it.
“Rest well. May you not repeat your mistakes in your next life.”
I stood up from the pyre. The Ravens launched into flight. As they ascended in the column of smoke, I left the dream.