Eloise Sunday was trying her best.
Miss Sunday was not an elected official, or a member of the constabulary; they had all been killed many years ago. No, Eloise Sunday was an ordinary person with unordinary compassion: Eloise Sunday had taken responsibility for the Valley of Sin.
The city was nested down in the Valley in such a way that one could not pass from one end of the Valley to the other without going through it. For this reason, The Valley of Sin referred to both the geological formation and the city within. The roads to the city were all lined with ash trees, and every road in and out required one to make a clockwise circle around city in order to traverse them. This was geometrically impossible, but Eloise Sunday seemed to have pulled it off. All the millstones of the farms outside the city, nested in crescent-shaped wedges amidst the spiral roads, spun clockwise as well.
The Sorrower saw all this as he made his way into the city. The Sorrower was impressed.
The Sorrower knocked on Eloise Sunday’s door. It was one of the only two houses immediately off the city square -or, rather, the city center, since the paved area surrounding the stately well was in fact a circle. Assuming twelve noon stood at the north, then Eloise Sunday’s house was positioned at nine ‘o clock.
Eloise Sunday opened the door, opened her mouth as though to speak, then caught herself. Hastily, and with a little smile, she said “White Rabbit.”
The Sorrower nodded duly. “The first of the month. Have I called on you too early, Miss Sunday?”
“No, not at all,” Miss Sunday said, her smile broadening when she saw The Sorrower’s understanding. “I said the first half last night, and I suppose I haven’t had the occasion to talk this morning until just now.”
“Then that was a brush with calamity. You like to live dangerously, Eloise Sunday.” The Sorrower offered her a rare smile.
“Walk with me, Sorrower,” Eloise Sunday said without needing an introduction from the stately man before her. “We will do the morning rituals together.”
The Sorrower nodded, and stood aside to allow Eloise Sunday to exit the house. He followed her down the short garden path to the city’s center.
Eloise Sunday possessed an inimitable force of character that manifested as an almost tangible field around her. She did not need to speak or act for this to be known about her; she simply knew how to occupy a space well, much like The Sorrower beside her. It would be generous to say the grey in Eloise Sunday’s hair was premature, but she possessed the visage and energy of a much younger woman, along with the knowledge of how to properly wield it that comes only from aging with confidence.
On the way out of the garden, Miss Sunday stopped to gather nine leaves from the ash tree near the gate before guiding The Sorrower to the well in the center of the city. “I wondered when you would find us here in the Valley of Sin,” Miss Sunday said, drawing to a stop at the well’s stone ledge. A bowl sat waiting for her there; even the most despicable of the Valley’s sinners knew better than to interfere with Miss Sunday’s rituals, and by extension, her bowl. “Be a dear?”
The Sorrower obligingly turned the well’s crank, lifting a bucket from its depths. “It was my understanding,” The Sorrower said as the bucket began its ascent, “that after the troubles here, someone had taken responsibility for the Valley. Why you?”
Miss Sunday took the bucket and sat it on the edge of the well as she replied “Someone had to” as though it was the most simple thing in the world.
Miss Sunday dipped her bowl in the bucket, then withdrew it to set it on the ledge. Next, she placed the nine ash leaves in, one by one, before picking up the bowl again. “Three times around the center now, Sorrower,” she said, guiding the man to the circle’s perimeter. They began to walk the circumference in the direction of the sun.
“I saw the roads,” The Sorrower said, “And the millstones. What else have you done here?”
“Belltowers,” Miss Sunday said. “Positioned at noon, four, and eight.” These numbers were marking their position relatively to the city center, them being spaced evenly throughout the city. “One rings at three ‘o clock, one at four, one at seven, and all ring together at nine ‘o clock. In total, twelve chimes per day.”
“Three times four,” The Sorrower noted.
“And nails,” she said, “in all the doorposts. I saw to it when the reconstruction began. Three on one side, four on the other,” she said.
“Impressive.”
“And there are other things too, of course,” she said, “teaching the populous daily rituals, minor superstitions. Don’t turn your mattress on Saturday, don’t leave your gloves at a friend’s house; that sort of thing. We can’t all hold the Sorrows in our hand like you; a million small things is all I can manage.”
“It is more than enough, Miss Sunday.”
“Apparently not. This is still a place of sin, Sorrower, with more dying as time goes on.”
“Tell me more of this.”
They finished their three laps around the city center, and returned to the well. Eloise Sunday poured the water from her bowl back in, along with the ash leaves. Three seconds passed, then the earth rang, from deep underground, thundering up through the well. Once, twice, three times, four, five times it rang.
Eloise Sunday sighed. “It was five last week, too.”
“The significance?” The Sorrower asked.
“Each ring is a death,” Miss Sunday said, “a murder specifically. Five this week. Five the last. Some weeks, none at all, but those weeks are growing more and more infrequent.”
“The townsfolk, can they hear it?”
“Some can. More still can’t; they don’t care enough to bear the weight of it, I suppose. It’s easier not to hear.”
Miss Sunday reached into her pocket and pulled out a pin. She bent it at an angle, then dropped it in, with a little wish. “It won’t stop the deaths,” she said sadly, “but a good wish, I feel, made in earnest, helps with the other aspects of life.”
“Thefts, assaults, things of that nature?”
Miss Sunday nodded. “I can’t save those poor souls fated to die, but I can support those they will leave behind. Ever since the troubles, this Valley has had such an effect on people. They’re filled with such rage, such passionate rage. I can only treat the symptoms, Sorrower. I hope you’re here to tell me you can treat the cause.” Eloise Sunday fixed The Sorrower with a stormy grey look that could pin a man to the spot.
“I will see. Tell me of these troubles.”
***
It started with Jonah Amber. He was from Miss Sunday’s generation, though her timeless energy made her seem both older and younger than him all at once.
His face was hard like stone. His eyes were hard like glass.
“Mister Amber,” The Sorrower said,
Jonah Amber looked all the way up at The Sorrower, crouched in his doorway. “Who are you?” He asked directly.
“I am The Sorrower. May I come in?”
Jonah Amber thought on this for a second, then stepped aside to allow The Sorrower entry.
“You have a lovely home,” The Sorrower said as he entered the foyer.
“It’s not mine,” Jonah Amber said.
“So I’m told. This is your prison, is my understanding. It’s an interesting form of house arrest, with no locks and no guards. What keeps you in here?”
Jonah Amber guided The Sorrower to the plainly -but comfortably- decorated sitting room and said simply in explanation “I have deep respect for Miss Sunday. She built this city from the ashes up.”
“Ashes, I understand, you are responsible for.” The Sorrower sat, following Jonah Amber’s lead. “You incite a revolt, kill the ruling classes, cause this city to burn to the ground… and you are punished with voluntary house arrest, in a nice home right off the city center?”
“Miss Sunday and I are… I am loath to say we are alike, but we both had the same goal. Create a better city. One not filled with poverty and crime, perpetuated by corruption.”
“You had very different methods,” The Sorrower pointed out.
“Miss Sunday is capable of great mercy,” Jonah Amber said, “which is what makes her a good leader. A respected one. It’s my belief that she thought punishing me more harshly would… It would continue the cycle of meeting violence with violence. A cycle I am ashamed to say I perpetuated. Having to deal with me put Eloise Sunday on a crossroads, and the direction she chose would shape this Valley forever. Sparing me was the first step in moving this city down a new path. Her path.”
“And did you deserve the mercy she gave you?”
“Of course not. That’s what makes it mercy.”
The Sorrower nodded, like Jonah Amber had passed some sort of test. Then he asked “But the city is getting worse again, isn’t it?”
Mister Amber sighed. “Eloise Sunday is trying her best. But these are the same people from the old city, the one filled with sin. Of course the sin followed them.”
“And if I told you that you could fix it, with my help?”
“I wouldn’t believe you. If anyone could, it would be Miss Sunday.”
The Sorrower straightened himself, eyeing Mister Amber critically. “You truly do respect her.”
“I do. This is her city now. She can help it to be more than what it currently is.”
“It’s her city now,” The Sorrower repeated pointedly, “But she could not have rebuilt if you hadn’t destroyed it. You are two sides of the same coin; the legacy of this city is just as much yours as it is hers. You are the sickness, she is the cure; the latter not able to exist without the former.”
“Your point, Sorrower?”
“Eloise Sunday is fulfilling a dream that was first yours; one for a new city. A better city. She represents something to you that this city desperately needs.”
Jonah Amber leaned in closer, resting his elbows on his knees, analyzing The Sorrower with an intense scrutiny. “What is it you mean to say, Sorrower?”
“You were… idealistic. Naively so, is my understanding. But this city corrupted you, and you allowed yourself to follow the path of violence. Eloise Sunday is the peaceful idealist you’d so hoped for yourself to be. Eloise Sunday is your Lost Innocence, your Misplaced Ideals, your Good Intentions. You must tell her as such, to pass on the torch, as it were: It is the only cure for this city’s evils.”
Jonah Amber sighed. He sat back and scratched at the beginnings of the beard adorning his chin as he looked off in thought at the wallpaper. “You don’t deal in the same superstitious charms as Eloise Sunday, do you, Sorrower?”
The Sorrower cracked a smile.
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