The shovel felt wrong in his hands.
Not heavy. Just wrong. Like holding something that should have been someone else's job, someone else's hands, someone else's grief. But there was no one else. There never had been.
He'd wrapped her in the good blanket. The one she saved for winter, the one she said was too nice to use except when it really mattered. He didn't know why he did it. She wouldn't be cold anymore. But he couldn't wrap her in anything less. Couldn't put her in the ground wrapped in something that smelled like the floor.
He dug the hole next to his father.
His father's grave was old now. The wood marker had gone grey, the words he'd carved with his own hands when he was twelve getting soft and hard to read. He remembered standing in this same spot, his mother behind him, her hand on his shoulder, telling him his father was in a better place. He hadn't believed her then. He didn't believe it now.
The dirt was hard. The rain hadn't come in weeks, and every scoop of the shovel was like breaking rock. His arms ached. His hands blistered. He kept digging.
He dug until the hole was deep enough that she wouldn't be disturbed. Deep enough that the animals couldn't get to her. Deep enough that it felt like he was putting her in a different world, one he couldn't follow her into no matter how much he wanted to.
When he finished, he stood at the edge and looked down at her.
She looked small. Smaller than she'd ever looked in life. Wrapped in the blanket, her face peaceful, her hands folded the way she always folded them when she was resting. He wanted to climb down there with her. He wanted to lie next to her and close his eyes and let the dirt cover them both.
He didn't.
He lowered her down, slow, his arms shaking, his breath coming in gasps that weren't from the work. The blanket caught on the edge for a moment and his heart stopped because he thought it might tear, might open, might show her face one more time and he didn't think he could take that. But it didn't tear. She settled at the bottom, soft, quiet, and he stood there looking at her for a long time.
Then he started shoveling.
The first clump of dirt hit the blanket and he stopped. His hand froze. The sound was too loud, too final, too much like something closing that was never going to open again.
He couldn't do it.
He had to do it.
He closed his eyes and threw another shovel full. And another. And another.
By the time he was done, his face was wet and he didn't remember starting to cry. He didn't remember stopping either. There was just the mound of fresh dirt, the old marker next to it, and the quiet.
He knelt down. Put his hand on the dirt. It was cold.
"I'm sorry," he said. His voice was hoarse. He hadn't spoken since yesterday, since her hand went slack in his. "I'm sorry I couldn't save you."
The wind blew. The trees at the edge of the graveyard rustled. No one answered.
He heard them before he saw them. Footsteps. Voices. The kind of voices that carried when people wanted you to hear.
He turned.
There were maybe ten of them. Villagers. People he'd known his whole life. People who'd watched him grow up, who'd bought bread from his mother's oven, who'd smiled at him when he was a kid running through the streets with scraped knees and a laugh that never stopped.
They weren't smiling now.
Gerald was at the front. The farmer with the bad temper and the worse sense of humor. He had his arms crossed, his boots planted like he was ready for a fight.
"You gonna bury her proper or just leave her there?" Gerald said.
Mark stood up. His knees cracked. He didn't say anything.
"I'm asking you a question, boy."
"It's done," Mark said. His voice came out flat. "She's buried."
"Should have been done yesterday," a woman said from behind Gerald. Marta. She sold eggs at the market. She'd always been friendly to his mother. "Shouldn't leave a body sitting around. It's not right."
"She died last night," Mark said.
"Should have come for us sooner," Gerald said. "We would have helped. But you didn't, did you? Just sat there with her like some kind of— I don't know. Like you were waiting for something."
He had been waiting. He'd been waiting for her to open her eyes. He'd been waiting for this to be a dream. He'd been waiting for anything that didn't feel like the world ending.
He didn't say that.
"He probably didn't know what to do," a younger voice said. Elias. He was Mark's age. They'd played together when they were kids. Chased each other through the fields, stole apples from Gerald's orchard, fell in the river together. "You know. Being what he is."
Being what he is.
The words hung in the air.
Mark looked at Elias. Elias looked back, and for a moment there was something there, something that might have been shame, might have been the ghost of a friendship that used to mean something. Then Elias looked away.
"He's a Null," Gerald said. "Can't expect him to think like a normal person. No System, no sense."
Someone laughed. It was a short laugh, the kind that wasn't funny but came out anyway.
Mark's hands curled into fists at his sides. The blisters on his palms burned.
"My mother just died," he said. His voice was quiet. Too quiet maybe. "She's not even in the ground yet and you're standing here talking about Systems."
"We're just saying," Marta said, and her voice was softer now, like she was trying to sound reasonable, "it's a shame. A woman like her. Wasting herself on a Null. On a boy who can't even— she deserved better."
Something cracked in Mark's chest. Something that had been holding together by a thread since yesterday, since three days ago, since he was fifteen and the stone stayed dark and he watched the light go out of his mother's eyes when they told her what it meant.
"She deserved better," he repeated. The words tasted like ash.
"She did," Gerald said. "She was a good woman. A good woman with a System that could have taken her anywhere. And she stayed here. For you." He pointed a thick finger at Mark. "For a boy who couldn't even give her a proper funeral because he's got no way to make money, no way to do anything, no way to be anything."
"That's enough," a new voice said.
Mark looked up.
It was the baker's wife. Lena. She was standing at the edge of the group, her apron still dusted with flour, her face red like she'd run the whole way. Behind her was her daughter, Sara. The one who'd given him the extra roll when they were six. The one he'd written the letter to. She looked at him with eyes that were wet.
"This is a burial," Lena said, pushing through the group. "You don't come to a burial and talk to someone like that. You don't come at all if you can't keep your mouth shut."
"We're just saying what everyone's thinking," Marta said.
"Then everyone should be ashamed," Lena said. She stopped next to Mark, close enough that he could smell the bread on her clothes. "He was her son. Her only son. And she loved him. And you all knew her, and you knew that, and you stand here now and talk about Systems like that woman didn't hold you, Gerald, when your cow died. Like she didn't sit with you, Marta, when your mother was sick. Like she didn't feed your kids, Elias, when the harvest failed."
No one said anything.
Sara stepped forward. She had something in her hands. A small loaf, fresh baked, the crust still golden. She walked up to Mark and held it out.
"I'm sorry," she said. Her voice was quiet. "She was always nice to me. She taught me how to make the lavender soap. I— I remember."
Mark looked at the bread. He looked at her face. He remembered being six and thinking this girl was the most beautiful thing in the world because she gave him something when he was hungry. He remembered his mother laughing when he told her. He remembered the way she'd spelled the words for him.
He took the bread.
"Thank you," he said.
Sara nodded. She looked like she wanted to say something else. But she didn't. She just went back to her mother, and Lena put an arm around her, and they stood there like a wall between him and the rest of them.
"You should go," Lena said to the others. "Leave him be."
Gerald snorted. "He's a Null. He's got no future here. You know that. We all know that. The Church says—"
"I don't care what the Church says," Lena cut in. "And neither did she. So you can take your Church and your System and whatever else you think makes you better, and you can leave."
For a moment, no one moved.
Then Gerald spat on the ground. Not on the grave. Close enough.
"He's a Null," he said again, like it was the only word that mattered. "He'll always be a Null. And when he's gone, no one's gonna remember him. But we'll remember her. And we'll remember she wasted herself on nothing."
He turned and walked away. The others followed. Marta glanced back once, her face unreadable, and then she was gone too.
Elias stayed for a moment. He looked at Mark. His mouth opened like he was going to say something. Then he closed it. Shook his head. Walked away.
And then it was just Mark, and Lena, and Sara, and the two graves.
"I'm sorry," Lena said again. "They shouldn't have—"
"It's fine," Mark said. The words were automatic. They didn't mean anything.
"It's not fine." Lena's voice was fierce. "It's not fine and you know it. What they said. What they think. It's not right."
Mark looked at the grave. The fresh dirt. The blanket underneath.
"My father used to say something," he said. "He said the System doesn't give you a heart. And it doesn't take it away either. He said that was the one thing everyone had the same."
He remembered his father's hands, rough from work, holding him when he was small. He remembered his father's laugh, loud and warm, filling the whole house. He remembered the day his father died, and how his mother held him and told him the same thing his father had always said.
"He was a good man," Lena said.
"He was."
"Your mother too."
"I know."
The silence stretched. Sara was looking at the grave, her hands clasped in front of her.
"You gonna be okay?" Lena asked.
Mark almost laughed. He wasn't sure what okay meant anymore. He wasn't sure what anything meant. There was just this hole in his chest that used to have his mother in it, and this weight in his hands that used to be a shovel, and this sky above him that didn't care whether he was standing under it or not.
"I don't know," he said.
Lena nodded like she understood. Maybe she did. She'd lost people too. Everyone had.
"You need anything," she said, "you come to us. You hear? Bread, soup, whatever. You come."
Mark looked at the bread in his hands. Still warm. Still fresh.
"Thank you," he said.
Lena squeezed his arm once, hard, and then she took Sara's hand and they walked away. Sara looked back once. He watched her go until she was just a shape at the edge of the graveyard, and then nothing.
He stood there for a long time.
The sun moved across the sky. He didn't notice. He was looking at the grave, at the marker he was going to have to make, at the words he was going to have to carve, at the life that was supposed to be in front of him that didn't make any sense now.
He thought about his father.
He thought about the stories his father used to tell. About traveling, about seeing the world, about all the places he'd been before he settled down. His father had a System. A low one, nothing special, but enough to get him through the days. He'd always told Mark that Systems were just tools. That they didn't make the man.
"The man makes the man," he'd say, tapping Mark's chest right over his heart. "You got that in there. That's the only thing that matters."
He thought about his mother.
He thought about the night he came home crying because the other kids called him a Null. He was eight. He didn't even know what it meant then, not really. He just knew it was bad, that it made people look at him different, that it made him different.
She'd knelt down in front of him. She'd put her hands on his shoulders. She'd looked him in the eye.
"You listen to me," she'd said. "You're not broken. You're not less. You're my son, and you're the best thing I ever did. And if anyone tells you different, you tell them your mother says they can kiss her backside."
He smiled. It was a small smile, cracked and broken, but it was there.
Then he looked at the graves again, and the smile went away.
He thought about Gerald's face. About Marta's voice. About Elias looking away.
He thought about being a Null.