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Walking the Dust

2: Out Of The Sun

The first time I met a Sunner, I fell in love.

It was after I'd been to the edge of the Suntop Peaks, coming back up through the flatlands. I was in a walking caravan heading to Sandy Ridge, the first big town as you head up that way. They didn't name the flatlands for no reason. They're flat as this here writing paper. Makes them great for walking through, and we were making good time.

But it also means you walk straight into a whipstorm damn near every day.

We saw it coming from miles off, another point in the flatlands' favour. The caravan leaders—a trading family led by a grand old woman called Myla, with about three dozen grandkids—staked out tarps by the time it reached us. There were around sixty of us walking with the traders, all paying our way with either Wosh-Tun coin or some work. I was telling stories for my keep, and I reckon I got the better deal.

So we all huddled down under these tarps and waited for the sand and dust to blow over. Whipstorms don't normally last long out in the flat, it's if you get caught in the hills or valleys you need to dig down for the night.

And someone there—I can't remember who, and it kills me because I remember everything else about that time—asked me to tell a story. So I did. I told them the Wosh-Tun version of the Big Wet story, which most of them had never heard before. The few children with the party were rapt, scooting over to sit right near me as I told them about the New Killer War and god's vengeance on all the nasty people. They loved it.

Kids.

But when I finished, a man's voice called out from a dark corner of the tarp. "It is a lie," he said.

He stood up, and I remembered seeing him around during the walk, but not much. He didn't speak to many people, and when he did he didn't say a lot. I know he helped build the fire every night, and he was always awake before everyone else in the morning, but besides that this thin, handsome man with skin like goatshide and a body half-covered in tattoos was a stranger to me.

He was a Sunner.

I'd never met one. Heard some mention of them before I'd set out for the Peaks, but never seen one with my own eyes. I found out later that I may actually have met some without realising it; Sunners look just like you and me. Only their priests, called "Sun-Singers", walk around half-naked and covered in tattoos.

This man was a Sun-Singer.

He started telling his own story, the tale of the Big Wet as the Sunners learn it. How Mother Sun and Father Moon punished us because we were petty and spiteful, because we craved their secret knowledge, because we spurned their beautiful children when they tried to help us see the light. It was a great story, more powerful than most of the Big Wet myths I've heard, and everyone strained to hear him over the howl of the whipstorm outside. I thought that was it, that he was done, but I was wrong.

Because then he began to sing. He had a rich, deep voice full of beauty and pain. And just for a moment, we forgot all about the storm.

I spent a lot of time on the rest of that journey talking to the Sun-Singer. I learnt a lot about Sunners, their beliefs and their ideals. I asked him how many there were, and he either didn't know or wouldn't say. But he seemed confident they were growing in number. And looking back, he was right. The Sunner religion is growing fast, both in cities and out in the shanties.

Maybe one day we'll all be Sunners. Maybe that's the point, the lesson Mother Sun and Father Moon wanted to teach us all along.

We reached Sandy Ridge a week later. The Sun-Singer told me he was sticking around for a while to spread his word.

As we parted, he kissed me on the forehead and said, "May Mother Sun light your path."

It wasn't until later, as I was resting in the nearest firewater hole, that I realised I'd never asked his name. And I never saw him again, not in Sandy Ridge or anywhere else.

But sometimes, when the whipstorms howl outside my door, I hear his beautiful voice singing as clear as all those years ago. And I smile.