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GRAVEDIGGERS - GIVEN NAMES
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Given names are sacred to Gravediggers. They can be given at birth, but are sometimes not given up to age three, when a Gravedigger child’s fate is most likely secured. Given names hold spiritual weight to Gravediggers, and clan members are encouraged to assess, understand, and sometimes even change their given names when they reach adulthood.

Some Gravedigger parents believe that allowing Society to choose a name for a child designated for life as a ward is a disrespect to the heritage, while others believe it will bring fortune to or encourage kindness toward the child as they navigate their life in Society. Both choices have been seen to positively and negatively affect the well-being of a ward, as well as their choice to return to the clan upon marriage or adulthood.

Most Gravediggers will offer their surnames or just the name, “Gravedigger,” when asked by a Society-citizen. This is a holdover superstition from the days where a Gravedigger’s name could supposedly be used to curse them.

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***
MILES
***

Uncle Daniel bore no children of his own, but he wrote to his younger sister Marina every week. He used to call her on the phone she bought him. Somewhere in Society, he has a nephew he has never met. He never married. He loved my father. My father loved him. Uncle has no love for Gravediggers. He loves me. He has no love for Society-citizens. He loved Marina. Father loved Mother, and Mother loved me and my younger sister. Mother loved Uncle, too, though not as Father did.

I do not know where my sister Tasha is now, only that I was supposed to take her place. Three years I lived as an only child, as my parents patiently prayed for a son. At three, Tasha was born. Mother wept, as it meant I would be sent away. But I was not sent away.

They thought I was the eldest daughter, but I knew from the start that I was the eldest son. Grandfather and Uncle and Father agreed; it was obvious I was no daughter. So for three years after Tasha was born, they tried again and again to bear a son. For three years I got to be the strong elder brother, protecting and loving and teaching my precious sister. When Tasha turned three, she was sent to Society as the eldest daughter of the Gravedigger-Way family. Mother wept and never stopped. Mother’s love was always shadowed by a Gravedigger’s fear. That fear of losing a child you got to love for three years, that fear you will send your daughter to a fate more miserable than death at the hands of Society.

She bore no children after that, as her health declined at rapid speeds. She didn’t last the year. Father did his best, but he was devastated. Uncle and Grandfather helped raise me as Father tended his broken heart. He loved me and Uncle, but he could bear it no better than Mother. He followed her shortly after. I do not know how Uncle survived this long, nor Grandfather, nor myself. How does any Gravedigger survive this world?

I was too short and too young to be a pallbearer. I stood at Father’s grave, right next to Mother’s, shovel at the ready, as Uncle, Grandfather, and some of the neighboring Gravediggers hoisted his coffin - carved painstakingly and lovingly by Grandfather himself - down the straight path from the funeral home to the hole I dug with my cousins. Mother’s headstone is precise and beautiful, save for a small, misshapen letter ‘n’ that I insisted on chiseling in myself, before I was old enough to understand that a headstone was supposed to be a tribute to the dead. I just wanted to be a part of Mother’s memory.

Father’s headstone is entirely composed of wobbly, misshapen letters that match the ‘n’ on Mother’s, because Uncle knew that a tribute to the dead was more importantly comprised of love than beauty, and I loved Father. Uncle loved Father so much that he let me carve the whole thing myself.

Grandfather died when I was fourteen, and by then I was apprenticed under Uncle. It was I who prepared his body, and Uncle who placed it into the coffin Grandfather had carved for himself. The young neighbor cousins dug the grave, and I - still impishly short - bore it with a shoulder scaffold. I carried it alongside the others down the straight path from the funeral home to the hole.

***
PRESENT DAY
***

Graham’s phone rings. It’s the middle of the night, and he’s only had - he glances at the clock, blinking ugly and red in the darkness - three hours and twenty-eight minutes of sleep. And he must be up early for training tomorrow.

It is not a number he recognizes, but its digits tell him that the call comes from Raildusk, his hometown. He knows no one will call him from the town except for Grandpa, so he silences the call and rolls over to go back to sleep.

He hasn’t closed his eyes for fifteen minutes - he knows, because he checks the clock - before a call rings through again. This time, it is from home. Grandpa’s ancient landline, the one with a rotary dial that he refuses to give up, no matter how far technology advances.

There is a pit forming in the bottom of his stomach. To receive a call from an unknown Raildusk number at 1 am, and then another from Grandpa… Graham answers.

“Hello?” he says, and his voice is hoarse with sleep and worry.

“Graham?” the voice on the other end of the line whispers.

“… Inchworm? Is that you?” Graham sits up in bed and rubs furiously at his eyes, waiting while they adjust to the dim streetlights that filter in from his window. To hear that voice at this hour makes him wish he could strangle the city light pollution and drink in the moonlight again.

“Yeah, Graham. It’s… Armando. Your grandfather’s dead. Can you come back to Raildusk?”