The Weight of the Dead by Brian Hodge
My rating: 4/5 cats
It had never seemed any clearer than it did now: the people and the forces that meant to destroy would always win, always come out on top over the ones that wanted to build. The world and everything in it was just geared that way, made to fail, made to fall. The most you could do was draw your line in the dirt and hunker down behind it and keep the worst on the other side of the line where it belonged, and try your best to stop it from crossing over for one more day.
this free tor short excels in the big three: cover – for luring you in, writing – to grab and hold your interest, and concept – to make you think about it long afterwards.
it also has an arresting first line:
As was their custom, as the law said, as it came down yesterday in judgment, they strapped her father to the corpse at midday, when the sun was at its highest overhead.
it takes place in a post-electrical world, in which people have reverted to an agrarian lifestyle and a code of justice and punishment characterized by brutal simplicity:
“If a man robs his brother of all his tomorrows, then that man’s own tomorrows shall be spent carrying his brother in death as he failed to do in life.”
in more concrete terms: the punishment for murder, no matter how deserved, is known as “The Rot,” and involves attaching the corpse of the victim onto the body of the killer, who will then be sent beyond the walls and safety of the enclave.
this is the fate of melody’s father, who maybe-accidentally murdered the man who killed and ate their dog, and will now suffer the daily reminder of his crime until the corpse falls apart, most likely infecting him with disease, or until he is killed by wild animals attracted to the smell of flesh or by the bands of raggedy men. but even before that grisly inevitable end, the burden of the body is a constant presence:
Tom Harkin’s chin draped over her father’s right shoulder, like a friend whispering something in his ear. His arms trailed down along her father’s side, and when her father struggled up to his feet again, the dead man’s legs dangled in back, ready to kick him every step along the way.
melody is fourteen, on the cusp of womanhood, and her father’s banishment leaves her vulnerable to the men of the village, the ones who take advantage of unprotected girls, the rough men who liked small things in their beds, while everyone averts their eyes and pretends it isn’t happening. she is also left to care for her younger brother jeremy, vulnerable in a different way. with her future uncertain, melody is determined not to show her weakness:
Now, finally, her father looked at her, Jeremy too, back and forth, up and down, and now she was glad she wasn’t crying. That would only make it worse, sending him out the gate with her tears on his conscience. She wanted him to see her tall, even though she wasn’t. Wanted him to see her brave, even if she wasn’t that either. The rest he had to know already.
melody is savvy enough to know the danger she is in, and some of the ways to deflect the unwanted attention: You didn’t outright tell them no and make them mad enough to think they had to teach you a lesson in manners and being neighborly.
but she’s still in a dangerous in-between stage, still ripe for victimization, without a mother to guide her into the full power and awe the women of the community inspire.
Women knew things, knew them without knowing quite how—they just did. Which scared the men sometimes, some of them, so that had to be a good thing. They looked at her like she was a woman now, and that part of it didn’t feel so good, but maybe the time had come to own it anyway, if it meant she would know things too.
although she is allowed to visit her father, to bring him food in his exile, the worsening condition of the corpse causes him to warn her that one day he might not come to meet her, to protect her from the sight of what he is becoming, which unwittingly provokes melody to make some difficult decisions.
from there, the story takes an unexpected turn and maybe gets a little clunky and confusing, but ultimately it’s a fantastic story of sacrifice and strength and vengeance that i really enjoyed.
a very high four stars cats from me!
read it for yourself here:
http://www.tor.com/2016/06/01/the-wei…
