The Buried Children

“As Long At The City Stands, We Live” (Episode 1 of Uprising — a six-part serialized fiction story)

In the morning, by order of the Night Queen, they began burying the last of the city’s children. The task had been grim and the soil was hard, and the soldiers dug in silence. Gone the usual banter, the jokes, the boasting. Gone were even the officers — the Reb’Mantos and Reb’Sellesin — The city had entered the realm of faith, over which the High Priestesses — the G’uthu — had command. Fourteen of them stood now, paces apart from one another, cloaks wrapped against the chill, overseeing the burials.

Each child went through the same ritual. Each was placed in the upright caskets, in a seated position on the small bench halfway up the wooden enclosure. Each was buried with the same urn, and each recited, ten times, the same words. The sacred words told the children how they might rise again, rise from the earth. It helped them stay strong.

Less than a hundred children remained. Outside the parapets, the enemy’s powerful war machines were turning the outer walls into dust. To Meeh’i, they sounded like a neverending thunder. When Meeh’i was little, she had clung to her mother’s tunic and wept. And that had lasted but minutes. Now Meeh’i was all alone, and the thunder had gone on for days. Soon…