Page 27 of Chapel at Ender’s Ridge (Ender’s Calling #1)
Dead Men Don’t Play Piano
W hen the sun rose, the survivors of Ender’s Ridge breathed a sigh of relief. Boils faded, leaving behind skin that was forever marked, but healing.
The dead lined the back of the chapel like bloated church pews. Those who recovered set off to disturb the old cemetery. The ringing of shovels against gravel and sand endured throughout the day.
The novelty of the bridge explosion had been lost on Ridgewater overnight—Ender’s Blessing mercifully strengthened after the lapse—and they paid no attention to the town across the river burying a third of their neighbors in fresh graves.
The last of the dirt mounded in a fresh scar on the land and Decker leaned on his shovel.
The washerwoman’s daughter, Nora, used planks of wood and paint taken from what remained of McKinney’s Mercantile to fashion grave markers. Her black hair curtained her tear-stained face as she toiled over the crosses, wordlessly pressing them into Decker’s hands as she finished.
McKinney wasn’t there to gruffly bellyache about going bankrupt when he let people take things from his store. He wasn’t there to secretly slip extra pieces of ribbon candy into their bags when children came in just to look. Without him, McKinney’s Mercantile was just another empty building.
Lee stood at his graveside, their shoes making two faint prints in the disturbed soil. “You haven’t buried Cricket,” they said.
Decker hammered in the marker at the head of the grave. “He’ll be buried in Amaretto.”
Cricket was never truly one of them, and it was only proper they buried him somewhere familiar to him—though if he asked, Cricket would’ve said he was too lucky to die, and too busy to think about it.
Lee cast a sideways glance at him, their eyes narrowing. “Take our horse. With our best wagon. You’ll be back before dawn.”
“Thank you,” Decker finally said, watching the little girl place the last marker at her mother’s grave. “I’m sorry about McKinney.”
“We mourn, and we move on,” Lee said distantly, their voice whispering like the wind through aspen leaves in the hills. “Our kind never lives as long as we should.”
Decker couldn’t assure them of peace, or safety, or a happy life. Those things were always stolen from them, ripped away by humans who claimed superiority in many ways.
Change had a way of waiting till the last moment to resurrect, and it was nearing the third day. Decker stood on the edge of throwing his shoulder against the stone to roll it away or waiting idly for the stone to release them to a world without fear.
Amaretto nestled high in the hills through a winding canyon.
Waterfalls trickled down small cliffs on either side of them and the scent of spruce lingered coldly in the night air.
The wagon wheels carved deep ruts into the road, lit up by lanterns Lee had fastened to each corner.
Behind Decker, the simple pine box jostled against the spring seat as they rumbled on.
A normal horse would have taken a day to reach town; with the help of the borrowed steed from the livery, they’d made it in two hours.
Steam rolled off the stallion’s black hide as he yanked against the reins, prancing between the traces, his eyes glowing gold in the lantern light. Power coiled in his haunches, the only flicker of spirit left between them.
Decker wore black.
So did Safine. She curled next to the casket, one hand resting over the bare pine planks and the other drawing her coat tighter around her from the northern wind whistling off the hills. Marshal clopped dully behind them, fully saddled, Cricket’s empty boots wedged in his stirrups.
One last adventure with his rider.
Before they’d fastened the casket shut, they’d laid Cricket on the table one final time. Cleaned the blood from his face, eased stiffening arms in a shirt of bright blue, smoothed his hair more neatly than he’d ever cared to.
Decker had held his necklace in his hand until the weight of it was enough to crush him. He scrubbed away the grime until it gleamed and threaded the pendant on a new leather cord.
They’d left pieces of themselves in that coffin. A flask of aged whiskey, a rosary, two shotgun shells, strained last rites from a man who never knew intimate death, and a fresh tin of tobacco and a sheaf of rolling papers in his pocket from Safine.
She hadn’t spoken a word before they left—not to Sister Inez, who stayed to make Willa rest; or to Willa, who cursed when she was told to stay in bed; and especially not to Laurie, who had made to climb into the seat next to him.
“It’s best you stay here,” Decker had said.
A look had flickered in his eyes like a wounded deer, but he’d nodded tightly and patted the side of the wagon. “Godspeed.”
White-washed posts held up the mercantile porch on Amaretto’s main street, casting deep shadows over the wanted poster of a long-haired outlaw with a cocky grin.
Their cemetery rose on a hill above the town, as if the ancient oak trees stretching above would bring the souls to heaven.
Dropping to his feet, Decker walked a path along the fence, checking each cross-topped gravestone and crouching to brush loam away from the flat markers set into the leaf-carpeted ground.
If there is a god, I hope he welcomes you.
If he didn’t, Cricket would raise hell until God got sick enough of the fool he’d let him in anyways.
Decker found Mercer's grave under a maple tree painted with the last burnished colors of fall. Plain granite, inscribed with her name and the date she died—three years ago, in the spring.
That had been right before Cricket had shown up at Ender’s Ridge, just months after Elias. Decker ran his hand over her name. The first was illegible, like someone hacked away at the stone. Mercer was her only identification, carved in letters seeming too harsh for a woman Cricket loved .
Sandy red soil piled high as Decker sank his shovel into the ground next to her grave. Safine never moved from guarding Cricket.
Only one walked through the cemetery as his grave formed: a woman with a cane glinting in the moonlight shuffled to the edge of the pit and asked who was being buried.
“A friend,” he said, forcing his shovel into the last layer of clay. She was gone when Decker hoisted himself out.
Night passed to early morning, and fog rolled in as they lowered him to his final resting place.
The first time Decker met Cricket Conklin, he had tried to kill him.
Chasing adventure with revolvers and outlaws and washing life down with whiskey, the boy lived hard, fell harder. He’d brought three lawmen hot on his tail the first day he arrived, tripping into the saloon, eyes bright and unaffected as he swung over the counter to hide in the back room.
“What the hell are you doing, kid?” Decker had asked sharply before his attention snapped to the lawmen milling at the bridge.
When they’d been taken care of and drifted away, he dragged Cricket out back by the necklace around his throat. He was a liability, with no indication that the veil protecting the town affected him—a danger to their way of life.
The damn pendant got in the way of his neck and snapped the tip off Decker’s left fang clean off.
“Crazy bastard.” Cricket had grinned, clapped him on the shoulders, and flirted with Safine until she’d allowed him a room, under the agreement she had very particular tastes and he was not one of them.
The next morning, when he’d found Decker’s stash of imported tobacco in the cellar and helped himself, Decker nearly tried to kill him again before grudgingly accepting he’d been added to their ranks, disturbing the staleness of the saloon.
Cricket always returned. Dust-covered and tired, he’d slouch on one of the chairs and try to root out the melancholy in himself with gambling and tall tales.
Decker suspected most of them were false.
Now I’ll never know for certain.
Safine stared into the grave, unblinking. There was nothing to say. Nothing could make this better, explain why this happened, or how to stop the rest of them from joining him.
Decker had been running from something his entire life—home, family, war, lovers—until his life slowed to a crawl here, where there was some semblance of safety. And now even safety lay in the grave in the form of Cricket Conklin.
The first rays of sun etched between the last clinging oak leaves, and Decker promised himself, promised Cricket, McKinney, and the dozens more they’d lost, that this time he wouldn’t run. If he died here, he’d be honored to be buried amongst friends.
Bitter coffee streamed from the pot as Decker wove between tables, filling cups for Safine, Willa, Sister Inez, and Laurie. He topped off his own cup with the last of the old blood scrounged from the mercantile and a heavy splash of Northern whiskey .
Soil crumbled from Decker’s sleeve as he lifted the cup to his mouth and he swiped it to the floor to join the rest of the tracked-in graveyard dirt.
Decker’s head spun like creaky wheels as he numbly sipped.
Gibson’s cows becoming infested with biting lice, Sitara’s illness, now the boils taking a third of the town.
Whitton was involved—he had no doubts about it—whether he caused the sickness or merely capitalized on it.
His interests lay in immortality and stretching the limits of the human body, not curses or illness, but right now it was the only thread to follow.
Across from him Laurie flipped through his Bible, soundlessly reading passage after passage.
Thomas had read him the Bible on several occasions, haltingly, in a soft voice as he picked out the words under the light of their fire on their way out West. Thomas favored the Old Testament, with tales of judgment and redemption, most of which Decker had long forgotten.
Decker’s neck prickled, raging against the fog of the past. Thomas loved one particular story about deliverance and oppressors serving their dues.
The coffee turned to ash in his mouth. “Exodus.”
Laurie stared at him.