The Bodytakers by Eva Papasoulioti
2800 words, 14 minutes reading time
Issue 2 (Spring/Summer 2023)
I can see the Helona from where I drag the first dead body up the hill, surrounded by a cloud of green and sand. Sharp claws nail into the dunes, leaving a trail of sunken eyes behind them. There is still time.
The dead body is heavy as I reach the top, gasping and heaving, my shirt drenched in sweat. I don’t look forward to making the trip twice more, but I have no choice; the last time we kept a body in the city, we regretted it. I catch my breath and start my descent. I used to think this rock was the end. The end for the bodies. The end of the city. The end for the bodytakers.
But now, having the city I called home on one side and the creature that took so many of us on the other, I can only think of lost possibilities and Celestis. I shouldn’t be doing this for a city that didn’t hesitate to throw em, us, to the creatures just because we didn’t have any family to support us. We had a family.
We had each other.
•••••••••••••
“Dare me.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I won’t dare you to jump on a scorching Helona.”
“Why? Is it different than climbing the rock with our bare hands?” Celestis crossed eir arms on eir chest and waited. Ey weren’t wrong, we’ve done some stupid shit growing up, but this sounded— felt, different.
“You fall down from this side of the rock, it’s not sure you die, Cel. Now, jumping on the creature? Even if you survive, even if you don’t turn into a tree, the creature will leave with you.”
The sun was sinking into the dunes and we had just finished carrying water from the well for the fourth time that day. A task left for those without real occupation, one that’d probably change the next morning depending on the needs of the city, but one that we’d do again many more times before I lost Celestis. We didn’t mind doing what people asked us to do, we understood the meaning of giving to the community, especially for those of us who had nothing of our own to begin. It was the feeling that we were replaceable that ached.
Celestis shrugged and looked away, towards the hanging rock, dyed in the fiery red and orange of the sunset with a longing that made eir black eyes wet. “This isn’t a bad outcome, you know. We don’t do anything here anyway.”
“We live here.”
“Do we?”
•••••••••••••
I am the bodytaker.
My job is to take our dead up the hill, on the hanging rock, and dispose of them.
We have tried burying the bodies but the sand spits them up days later. We have tried burning them, too, only to fight hundreds of azure skorpious that surfaced when the fire became big enough. We have thought of leaving them to the vultures but bits and pieces always found their way back to the city.
•••••••••••••
“Hey, Eos.” Celestis’ belly under my cheek moving as ey spoke, soft, familiar, warm, a place I always felt safe. “Say, what do you imagine of the world beyond the limits of our city?”
I paused and frowned at the stars above us. My limbs were heavy with a full day’s work and my eyes with the heaviness of a full belly. I could calculate the time it would take for ten trips back and forth to the well, I could tell how many bugs were enough to make a stew for a hundred people, I could tell how many nights until the full moon without looking at the sky. But I wasn’t like Celestis, I couldn’t imagine new things. The images in my head couldn’t reach past the things I already knew and the practical ways to implement them. My ideas were born only from the problems I needed to solve.
I gave it a try anyway.
“Maybe there are places where the wells are so full of water people don’t need to dig deeper every three moons.”
Eir breath blew a tuft of my hair on my face. “That’s it?”
“What? If you think you can do better go ahead.” Of course, Celestis thought ey could do better. This wasn’t our first time playing this game. It always started with me, failing, and ended with em filling my head with wonder and my chest full of em.
“Well, okay,” Celestis said. “Let’s see. Maybe there is a city with a fallen star in its center to keep everyone warm, moondust shining the streets at night and people singing adventure stories freely before bed.”
I turned on my side as ey spoke. Voice unfaltering, Celestis adjusted eir fingers to keep caressing my hair. Eir eyes shone under the starlight, the little scar on eir upper lip a half-moon.
“Maybe their homes are covered in plants. Nothing is white. Nothing is empty. Everything is green. Everything breathes, alive. Even the ground under their feet.” Ey swallow. “Maybe they drink the light of the sun during the day and at night they shine in hundreds of colors.”
Three things sneaked into Celestis’ stories again and again. Plants, light, and life. So much life. And while I certainly didn’t know if there were moonplants or starflowers out there, I knew one thing: my Celestis was never as free as ey were when ey were dreaming out loud for me.
Ey caught me staring. I did that a lot. Celestis pulled emself on eir elbows, bringing eir face so close to mine I could feel soft breath on my cheeks. Plants, lights, moon, sun. Nothing mattered when my whole world was filled with em. Celestis was my light and sun, my dreams, my imagination.
“Dare me,” ey whispered against my forehead. I couldn’t process a single thought other than the fact that eir body was so close, so warm, so alive. “Dare me.”
I swallowed and finally, finally met eir eyes, and I almost lost myself in their light. “I dare you.”
Celestis smiled, as if I had just promised em the world. We’ve been daring each other for years. Eir warmth felt as a promise, too. “Kiss me.”
•••••••••••••
Three dead and me.
Our leader’s spouse, dead giving birth. The healer’s parent, dead in eir sleep. An orphan, like Celestis, like me, dead from overexertion. No matter how hard the city has worked to tell us whose life is worth more, in death we bear no difference. The creature will take us all, and we’ll become trees.
My muscles scream as I haul the third body to the top, dropping it clumsily next to the other two. The Helona has reached the edge of the city. Soon, the huge carapace covered in the Green Dune will pass right below the hanging rock; right under where I’ll stand and I’ll have to send the dead off.
I am bent over, hands on my knees, wheezing, so I don’t hear at first. My blood pumping loudly in my ears, my sweat running down, darkening the stone between my feet. But then, as my breathing slows and the sun burns the skin of my neck, I hear the words.
“Hello, Eos.”
There, at the very peak of the rock, standing proud and beaming, hands in eir pockets, Celestis. My Celestis.
I blink. I look back to the slope to make sure I am where I think I am. On my left, the Helona is getting closer, the faint tremors of its steps reverberating in my bones like a heartbeat. Almost here now. I’m not dreaming; time is still moving.
“You’re dead,” I say.
Ey laugh.
•••••••••••••
The day they announced Celestis as the next bodytaker, I cried for em as if I had already lost em.
There is no job more dangerous than the bodytaker’s, which is a surprising thing considering we live in a desert in extreme temperatures alongside a wildlife that eats the dead and the living indiscriminately. No bodytaker survives. They do the job three times, ten, some have even managed fifteen trips, but eventually every one disappears.
After Celestis, it was someone else, then someone else–I lost count of how many someone elses—then my turn came and after me it’s the turn of the next orphan who managed to survive because the city won’t risk someone with family ties.
There was a time I believed that everyone had their place, their role in a city that survived the apocalypse. After all, without solidarity, without people supporting each other, the city wouldn’t exist, would it? And the city is the sum of its people. The harder the work, the stronger the city. The stronger the city, the more food for our work.
Celestis was the first person to tell me ey didn’t feel any gratitude—I shouldn’t feel any gratitude—towards those who thought that a few mouthfuls of food was all our worth.
•••••••••••••
I grasp the wrists of the first body and drag it to the edge, heave it over. The Helona will be under the rock in a few breaths. I have three bodies to dispose of, but my whole existence is focused on Celestis’ voice.
“I have been traveling,” ey say, balancing from one foot to the other, tapping their toes, waiting for me to ask questions.
“I thought you were dead,” I say instead.
Ey flinch, and I move to the next body. Celestis follows and takes one wrist in eir hands, pulling hard in sync with me, eir eyes on me. “I just fell. These bodies are scorching heavy. Obviously you know how it is, I went to drop one and the weight pulled me over.”
I nod as if I understand and I let the cold hand fall to the ground. “You haven’t yet explained why you’re alive.” I want to be happy, run into eir arms and kiss em. Only the stars know how much I’ve dreamed of Celestis. How many times I cried myself to sleep imagining—me, imagining—that ey came back for me. But now all there is for me is my clenched teeth and the memories of being left behind, alone.
I want to scream but I manage to swallow it down, barely. Celestis should be proud, I think as I relax my jaw, relieve some of the pain. Ey’ve taught me how to be angry, and now I don’t know how to be anything else.
•••••••••••••
Eir hand extended, palm up, ey waited.
“Come with me,” Celestis said again. Ey had gone to the rock two times and two times asked me to go with em. Two times I said no. Both times ey didn’t dare me.
I watched em leave with a small body drawing thin lines in the sand behind em, and I couldn’t stop thinking, what was I so afraid of?
Was a long life without Celestis better than a shorter life with em? It was like I couldn’t weigh the important things. Before I met em, I knew I needed to work to get fed. I needed to be obedient to get work. I needed to be invisible and silent to be obedient. Anything else and there was no food in my dirty fingers at the end of the day and the next I had to work on an empty stomach and working on an empty stomach makes one antsy, makes one prone to mistakes, to saying something one doesn’t mean and there is an endless, continuous circle of desperation. Celestis showed me how to break the circle, take no shit and give no ground.
I watched Celestis go and wondered if life meant anything without the person that is my whole world. And if my world fell, shouldn’t I go down with it?
•••••••••••••
“The dead don’t turn into trees when we drop them, Eos. And people don’t die if they fall from the rock. The trees are tall but their canopy is thick, it’s like sinking into quicksand.”
“What’s a canopy?” I kick the body over the edge and don’t stay to watch it disappear. I turn to the last one.
“What we call the Green Dune. The top of the trees. Underneath there is shade, sweet breeze and protection from the sun.” Celestis’ huffs as ey bend down to grasp the other hand. “I want you to come with me. We said we’d see the world together. Now it’s our chance.”
“What? Jump on a Helona hoping you’re lucky a second time?”
“People live on the Helones, Eos. This isn’t even the only one. There are forests three or four hundred days from here. Not just forests. Other cities like we dreamed of. Other people, languages, stories.”
I frown because I don’t know what a forest is but I don’t ask. “There are?” The city is adamant: we are the only survivors. We are never going to survive away from the city. We are lucky to be alive. Lucky to work for them.
“What if I told you there are cities covered in water?” I don’t believe em and it must show on my face. “There are very long and deep wells, called lakes. The water is sweet and in their depth there are cities and caves and canyons. And all kinds of animals living and swimming in it and under it. Even people.”
“People?”
Ey look at me with a smile, undeterred by my unbelief. “It’s alright,” ey say. “You’ll see for yourself. And you’ll see places that have frozen water in the ground for months, and giant birds unable to fly, used for riding, and hundreds of blue worms, not edible but fueling fire and light in the bigger cities.”
“And plants?” I dare ask.
Celestis gasps, a watery half-laugh. Ey sniff hard, but eir eyes shine with tears. “There are places covered in them. There are buildings covered in them. There are people covered in them.” Eir voice breaks. “Like in our dreams.”
I look back at the city, as if it listens and will take away these stories from me. “Sounds too good, eh?”
“No. Sounds like there is a whole world out there and you deserve to see it.” With me, I can hear the words left unsaid.
“Why?”
“Why not?”
“Cel…”
“Come with me and I’ll show you, we are more than the price of the sun sinking into our skin. We can be so much more than waiting for the moment we won’t be anymore, Eos.”
I kick the last body off the hanging rock and this time I stand there and watch it disappear in the thickness of the leaves. The canopy looks hungry, a living thing eating the dead. But then, our city isn’t better. A living thing eating the living.
•••••••••••••
The Helona is moving indolently. Claws and carapace scraping over the earth. The trees sway in the soft wind, their limbs scratching at the side of the rock.
I look at Celestis, really look at em for the first time since ey came back to me. Eir skin isn’t burned from the sun, it has a healthier dark brown tone and ey’ve gained weight along with age, soft handles around eir waist and cheeks ready to be kissed.
“I want to say yes,” I say to em. Can it be so simple? Just say yes and leave?
“The world is bigger, better than what we’ve been taught.” Ey extends eir hand, waiting. “Let me show it to you. Let me see it with you.”
I nod, my fingers trembling as I raise my hand. The last time, I didn’t accept. I wasn’t brave enough, or maybe I wasn’t changed enough.
“A dare?” ey ask.
But the thing is, I am changed. And hungry, too. Hungry for a life where I won’t have to be grateful to others for merely existing. I take Celestis’ hand. The sense of holding a living person on this rock makes the hair at my neck rise. Unearthly somehow, as if the dead have awakened and mock me for my insolence. “Dare me,” I say.
Celestis’ grip is a vice. “I dare you.”
We take a couple of steps back. Ey squeeze my hand, I bring eir fingers to my lips.
A promise.
I never expected to leave this place with hope piercing its teeth through my lungs so hard I could barely breathe. Falling from here, as if I’m one of the dead bodies I carried up earlier today. Maybe I was. Maybe surviving wasn’t living. I gaze at the horizon, thinking of all the possibilities lying ahead and, for the first time, I anticipate. A person, a world, a change.
The tangible promise of hope from me to myself.
Celestis’ crooked smile catches the sun, eir eyes shine with mischief as the tree branches scrape against the stone impatiently.
“Jump.”