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THE WORTH OF ASHES

by Amanda Helms

 

 

Aselya retained enough of her sister’s ashes to hear them sing.

She trudged through the marketplace, the ashes secured in a pouch hanging from her hip, while the ghost of Firall’s mezzo-soprano harmonized with the marketplace din of stall owners shouting their wares, shoppers haggling costs, and arguments between both on the quality of this bolt of cloth, that basket of oranges.

Death had had little impact upon Firall’s personality, and so she sang not a ballad of her life, not a sweet lullaby the likes of which she’d used to urge Aselya’s children to sleep, or even a forlorn ode to how she’d died. No, Firall sang rude tavern songs in which aubergines and melons featured prominently.

Aselya smiled at the first verse, and in the way of ashes, Firall knew and kept it up long after the quirk faded from Aselya’s lips. Firall had always wanted to make her, and the children, and Father and Mother, laugh.

The closer Aselya drew to her destination, the more her feet slowed. Not everyone’s ashes sang, but when enough remained, one might hear the voices of the deceased in one’s mind, if the connection was strong. How much ash to keep depended upon the depth of emotion, whether love or hate.

Even songless ashes might be bartered, however, especially by the poor. For what else was of value except their dead?

Yet Aselya’s footsteps dragged. What if this barter would mark the last time she heard Firall?

Firall halted her song. Aselya. Her words in Aselya’s mind held the shape of a chide. Do what you must, as we did with Papa.

She was right, of course.

Asleya walked on to the accompaniment of Firall’s song. She’d arrived at the portion where the aubergine, particularly long and skinny, burst with “an unexpected amount of juice.”

“You’re a terrible influence,” Aselya murmured.

I am a paragon of refinement, Firall countered, and launched into the next verse.

Aselya reached the grain stall and swung Firall’s bag to her front, already feeling bereft.

The grain seller wasn’t much taller than Aselya. His thick black hair bore only a few hints of gray at his temples, and his skin looked smooth; his nails, evenly trimmed. Aselya, lips thin, waited as he studied the carefully resewn rips in her least-frayed caftan, her chapped lips, and her hold on Firall’s bag, kept light to avoid aggravating the cracked skin of her fingertips.

Firall lingered on the chorus, when the aubergine dried and withered.

Aselya wrenched her expression into pleasantry. “How much for two bags each of barley and wheat?”

The grain seller lifted his chin in turn and added a huff. “Skills?”

“Firall’s ashes are accomplished with song and dance. In life, she performed in the marketplace square, and was part of the Lightning troupe, which was invited to —”

“I’ve no use for frippery,” he snapped. “Ditties and jigs won’t harvest and mill wheat or barley. Do they bear any other skills? As you have nothing else.”

That, he said with a smirk. Aselya’s neck heated. He was right; she had nothing else to offer. They’d spent the last of Papa’s ashes paying the doctor for Firall’s futile treatment, and Aselya had had little luck selling her pottery.

But Ysmin and Bartrum waited for her at home. She had to try.

“Firall was exceedingly skilled with children. With her ashes, the user may soothe babies more quickly, gain patience and grace for little ones’ mischief, and actually make the children obey their elders.” Her smile became a little more genuine, thinking of Firall with Ysmin and Bartrum. The best auntie, most blessed auntie, the auntiest auntie of all, she’d sing, accompanying herself with hopping kicks that made even Aselya laugh.

Her declamation received only scorn. On the back of a guffaw, the grain seller said, “You aren’t the first to try to sell me on the ‘exceptionalism’ of childrearing. You are the first to do so without ashes that at least impart beauty.”

Aselya said nothing, and Firall stayed silent in her mind. They’d both inherited Papa’s hooked nose and, with skin perpetually dry from lack of oil, their ashes wouldn’t offer the beauty Mama’s had.

“But my eldest girl’s babe has colic. I suppose I might gift her the ashes.” Considering, the grain seller poked the side of his mouth with his tongue. “Two fistfuls of ash per quarter-bag of grain.”

Rage twined with despair burned Aselya’s throat. The price was exorbitant. She might lose Firall’s voice forever.

Don’t, Firall said. Bargain.

Aselya dipped her hand inside the bag. Firall’s ash worked into the cracks of her fingers. She drew out a small sample and offered it to the shopkeeper. “One fistful per full bag.”

Fingering the grit, the seller said, “I told you, song and dance are no good to me, and anyone can raise a child. Two fistfuls per half-bag.”

Aselya pressed her hand to her face and let some of the taste of her sister reach her tongue. Some of Firall’s lilt reached Aselya’s voice. She kept bargaining.

In the end, they agreed upon one fistful per half-bag. Aselya handed over the bulk of Firall for two bags of wheat and barley, and her stomach churned.

As she trudged back through the marketplace, Aselya sought Firall. Urging her to sing the last verse of the tavern song, when the melons had returned to their chores, not the least bothered by the aubergine’s withering.

No response.

Her hands clenched the new bags of wheat and barley. Back to the tenement, to at least grind the grains and make some fry cakes. Maybe the familiar surrounds would help draw out Firall.

Though she wasn’t sure she could spare the energy, Aselya set off for home at a jog.

---

Aselya had had more than her share of heartbreak in her thirty-three years, but she thought this, the sight of her twelve-year-old daughter whispering to a handful of grit, would be the thing that broke her completely.

Ysmin had wide, dark eyes, and the hook-nose had bypassed her. But the dark circles beneath the fringe of her lashes never left her, even in sleep, and Aseyla had noted how at mealtimes she’d been eating less, giving what she had to her younger brother, Bartrum.

Asleya tried to put a stop to it, when she saw. But Ysmin would only turn those large eyes on her and whisper — always whispering, was Ysmin — “But you have to eat too, Mama, so you can work.”

Ysmin was far too young to consider herself the expendable one.

“Auntie, come back,” Ysmin was whispering now, as Aselya ground the wheat.

Then, quieter yet, so that Aselya had to ease her grinding to hear, “What will we do without our auntiest of aunties?”

Later, when the sun was low and the sweat on Aselya’s brow had dried from her time at the tenement’s communal oven, when she sat with her two children upon the dingy rug that offered poor substitute for a table, Bartrum was the one to refuse his food.

He kept his arms crossed over his belly, which had started to protrude a few days after their lentils ran out.

Aselya bit her tongue. Lentils. She should’ve traded for them instead, despite the increased cost. She could’ve added them to the tenement’s garden —

But Bartrum glared at his mother and sister with all the betrayed trust of a child who knows he’s safe to misplace his anger.

“I won’t eat it. I want Auntie Firall back.”

Ysmin must have taken it upon herself to set a good example, for she took a bite of the dry, charred fry bread, chewed vigorously, and swallowed. “It’s delicious, Bartrum! The best I’ve had in months.”

Aselya hid her wince, sure Ysmin spoke truly about the bread, with its trace amount of goat milk, being the best in months, and regretted her daughter’s self-imposed sacrifices all the more.

Ysmin held out a piece to Bartrum. “Try it, it’s good!”

“It’s not worth losing Auntie.”

For after Ysmin had made her attempt at waking the ashes, Bartrum had made his. He was the most like Firall, and though his jokes were those of a child, nonsensical to all not directly in his head, with Firall’s passing he’d taken it upon himself to keep Ysmin’s and Aselya’s spirits up with his antics, pretending to train mantises to be part of his own acting troupe “like Auntie’s,” making quick somersaults outside their tenement with proclamations that he’d join the Lightning troupe as an acrobat, that he’d go to the palace one day and perform for the royal family.

As Ysmin flicked her wide eyes between her younger brother and her mother, Aselya let herself go distant, pretending she couldn’t hear their disagreement. She’d learned to do this, give them the illusion of privacy even when they were within arm’s reach.

The taste of the fry bread on her tongue wasn’t ash; it was parched dirt. Flavorless grit. Worthless.

“Mama worked hard to get us this food, Bartrum,” Ysmin said at last. “We shouldn’t waste it.”

Bartrum heaved himself to his feet. “It’s not worth losing Auntie!”

The sentence came out as a breathy shriek, stripped of the vigor. Bartrum even swayed, as if he’d risen too swiftly. He steadied, said, “I’m going outside,” and did so, but not before Aselya caught the wet sheen on his lashes.

Ysmin started after him, but Aselya caught her arm. “Let him go. He needs . . .” His aunt was the truest, and most impossible, response.

Aselya tried again. “I didn’t think —” She clamped her lips shut, unsure if she was about to lie to her child. She certainly hadn’t gone to the market with the intent of bartering away so much of Firall that they’d lose her.

But hadn’t she suspected it might happen? What could be gained from explaining that think had edged into expect, even if it had been threaded all through with worry, with regret, with grief?

Aselya felt Ysmin studying her, assessing how best to respond, and again she was struck with how twelve was too young for this.

Bartrum, at eight, was also too young for this, which was why he was acting out now.

Wasn’t thirty-three also too young? How old did one have to be, to be fine with losing a sister?

She shoved the fry bread from her with more force than she intended, making Ysmin start back.

“It’s all right.” The smile she gave her daughter was no more genuine than the one she’d given the grain seller. “I’m not that hungry, after all. I’m going for a walk. Set some food aside for Bartrum, in case he wants to eat later?” Without me around, she meant, and hoped he would.

Then she went walking, and she kept on through the dirty streets till she was far enough the children wouldn’t hear her cry.

---

Aselya nudged Ysmin awake so early, the sun had not yet risen. The waning gibbous moon lingered, its whiteness reminding Aselya not of a smile but of a mouth wide-open in a keen.

“I’m going to the market,” she said. “I may be gone the whole day.”

Even in weak light, Aselya recognized the shape of Ysmin’s frown, knowing there was nothing left to trade. Aselya didn’t want to tell Ysmin of her plans, in case city guards later came to fetch her. Surely they’d let the children be, if she made clear Ysmin and Bartrum hadn’t known.

Of course, city guards coming to arrest her wasn’t the only manner in which her plan might go wrong. She might fail from the outset and come back with nothing.

Worms formed of guilt burrowed in Aselya’s gut as she took advantage of her daughter’s obedience, of Ysmin’s desire to make things as easy as possible for her sole remaining caretaker. Too much burden, for one so young. Aselya was doing all of this wrong.

She smoothed back Ysmin’s hair, and, putting more encouragement in her tone, said, “Go back to sleep. I’ll see you this evening.”

A quiet exhale. Then: “All right, Mama. We love you.”

We. Ysmin did that sometimes as well, decide to speak for Bartrum. It was another thing Aselya would have to address.

For now, she brushed a swift kiss on Ysmin’s brow, then repeated the same for her son. As if the sun itself wanted her to think better, a ray of light struck his brow, showing how he grimaced in his sleep.

Then Aselya turned from the two remaining pieces of her heart before her grief could push itself from her chest and out her throat.

---

Aselya blended in with the general hubbub of the market as easily as a flea on a mangy dog. No one paid her any mind, with her hood drawn up against the high sun, a cloth over her face as if she were asthmatic and wished to block the ever-present dust. She stayed within the vicinity of the grain seller’s stall, and he never once spared a glance at her.

She had no food and, despite her small, measured sips, she drained her waterskin by midafternoon. Twice, she risked leaving to relieve herself and scurried back to her hiding spot, heart thudding dully with anxiety that the grain seller would have left early.

Yet he remained, having a fellow watch his stand the few times he needed to relieve himself or eat, until the shadows at last turned long and the sun began its descent below the line of the city’s flat-topped houses.

She half-expected the grain seller might dawdle, try to catch the last shoppers on their way out when their wills had worn down from fatigue, but no: his tone turned sharp as he haggled with one last customer, saying he had no reason to stay late for anything less than three handfuls of ash.

The transaction concluded, the customer departed, and the grain seller whistled as he packed up his remaining grain and his day’s earnings. He shuttered the stall and then took up a pull-cart and set off down the street.

Aselya’s heartbeat throbbed in her neck and the tips of her fingers as she followed after.

All day, her mind had skittered away from forming a true strategy, the details behind reclaim the ashes. Instead, it played memories of Ysmin whispering to the remainder of Firall’s ashes, pleading Auntie, come back. Her thoughts showed her again and again the twist of Bartrum’s mouth as he glared at Aselya, saying you did this with his eyes if not his lips.

It was foolish to follow the grain seller. It was impossible not to.

He led her out of the market district and to the east. Aselya trailed behind as far as she dared, keeping him at the very horizon of her line of sight. As they went, the houses gradually grew in size. Close to the market, tenement buildings — the sorts of which Aselya lived in — were rare; instead, one-room bungalows with a single window facing out dominated, then the bungalows gained a second window, then enough to imply four rooms, then those gave way to buildings larger yet, ones which surely required a ladder to reach a loft, and then to ones so massive they must have stairs inside.

The grain seller stopped at one of these.

Aselya tucked herself behind the corner of a house across from the grain seller’s, hoping luck would favor her for once, and its denizens wouldn’t glance outside. She peeked around the corner to observe the grain seller. Once he’d gone to the back — possibly they stored grain to sell there? — Aselya crept closer. She counted under her breath, telling herself by the time she reached two hundred, no five, no a thousand, the grain seller would’ve gone inside, and she might see if there were some storage shed, or, if she were daring, a dark, albeit open, window, or maybe less dangerously, a deep alcove for her to wait in while she counted to two thousand, while she waited for the gibbous rictus-moon to show itself fully and for the grain seller to fall asleep, and —

— the soft notes of a lullaby drifted to her ears.

Aselya stilled like liquid glass poured in cold water. Brittle and at risk of shatter.

The hum itched at the back of her throat. She bit it back, not wanting to reveal her presence.

Unbidden, her legs took her across the street and to a window at the back of the grain seller’s house. A lantern burned low, and a woman with neatly plaited black hair rocked a baby against her chest. Aselya judged her at least a decade younger than herself. Despite the woman’s apparent tiredness, she hadn’t reached exhaustion, which was often the most a new mother could hope for. She bore dark under-eye circles, but her back was straight — her body not yet urging her to sit despite knowing the lack of movement would likely wake the baby. Her lips brushed the child’s crown with tenderness.

And the song she sang was Firall’s.

Just under the window, Aselya let the hum flow up her throat, let it find the countermelody of Firall’s lullaby, and let the notes flow over her lips.

The woman’s song cut off. She stepped closer to the window, looked down. Even in the dimming light, Aselya saw it: the trace of ash on her lips.

The last notes of Aselya’s countermelody choked off behind a strangled cry.

Firall, who’d somehow known just how to soothe Bartrum during his own colic.

Who would come home from performing with the troupe with only a few coins that she would hand over cheerfully.

Who’d again and again found it in herself to choose joy.

Firall was here.

Aselya watched her hands lift, beseeching, as if they’d cut themselves from her and chose to act on their own.

But the words were hers. “Please. You have my sister.”

Did newly forged tools feel like this, when quenched in the water? Burning from the inside, the coolness without not yet reaching her center?

“And my children and I can no longer hear her.”

---

Even in the dark of night, the journey went far quicker than it had when Aselya left the bulk of Firall in a shop stall.

She arrived home after the children had fallen asleep. Silently, Aselya wedged herself into the bed between them. Ysmin rolled automatically into her mother’s side, her breathing deep and even.

Bartrum’s body followed when Aselya hummed Firall’s song.

---

The grain seller came the next day after dusk, following the market’s closing. Bartrum spotted him first and ran through the street, calling, “Ma! Maaaa!”

Aselya was at the tenement’s shared oven, cooking fry bread for her and her children’s evening meal. A line of anxiety-induced sweat dripped between her shoulder blades, but she pulled the unfinished bread from the oven, hissing as she plopped it immediately onto the length of muslin she’d brought with her to wrap the bread. The crust was set but the middle was sure to remain raw, yet she didn’t want to leave it behind, this symbol of both her labor and loss.

She also didn’t want to leave Ysmin to face the grain seller alone. That, more than Bartrum’s shrieking, made her stride quickly down the street toward their room.

The grain seller stood in the middle of street, hands planted on his hips, while he glowered up at Ysmin, peeking through the unshuttered window.

“We don’t have the ashes Mother traded,” Ysmin was saying, and though her color was wan and her voice high with stress, Aselya had never been so proud of her as then.

“Not according to my daughter! According to her, your mother must’ve followed me home, then found her alone and threatened her unless she gave up what’s mine!”

Aselya’s lips thinned as she recalled her hands lifted in a plea, the tears burning her throat, the young mother securely ensconced in her own home. The woman hadn’t given back all of Firall’s ashes. Some had been used already. A bit more, she might have retained for her own use.

But most she gave back to Aselya — gave — alongside a whisper: “I’m stronger than he thinks.”

Not so strong as to tell the grain seller the truth, however. Or he’d decided to lie himself.

Aselya skittered to a stop before the grain seller, Bartrum’s feet still slapping the ground some distance behind her. She didn’t look to her son, instead she focused upon the purpling neck of the grain seller. “What’s the meaning of this?” She caught the man’s arm, which he’d lifted as if, were Ysmin before him instead of safe behind their tenement’s wall, he’d have slapped her.

He didn’t slap Aselya. But he did shove her back so she stumbled to the ground. Something sharp drove up into her hip. The fall clacked her teeth in her head.

Ysmin screamed while Bartrum shouted, “Ma!” behind her.

“You!” The grain seller stomped toward her, his final step a hairsbreadth from slamming upon her arm. “After I so kindly traded my grain with you, you steal even my meager profit!”

“I don’t have the ashes I gave you. I have only the palmful that remained after our barter,” Aselya said, and the truth of it — albeit newborn — made her lift her chin. She fumbled for the muslin sack and the half-baked fry bread. “But if you care to take back your grain —”

He kicked the sack aside. “I don’t want your slop, I want my ashes!”

“We don’t have them.”

By now, neighbors had begun to gather. They formed a large perimeter around Aselya and the grain seller. Too far to intervene immediately, were he to decide he wanted to kick her or step on her. But close enough to bear witness. Close enough that old Grandmother Thriss placed her gnarled hands upon Bartrum’s shoulders.

The sight made Aselya lay her head back. Her children would be protected. At least in this moment.

“If the ashes are so worthless as you claim, I don’t know why you felt it necessary to come all this way for them.”

That, however, was a blatant lie. Aselya knew why he’d come, despite the “worthlessness” of Firall. Men such as he weren’t the sort to let go what they perceived as a slight, even if they spent more to regain it than if they’d simply let it lie. They had not learned to weigh out the cost of their pettiness.

It wasn’t fury that made her push herself to sitting. She was too weary for it. But pride — she could muster a portion of that. “Now you are here, come to terrorize my children, and for what? Do you not see how little we have?”

The grain seller’s mien turned assessing. His attention roved over the gathered crowd, to Ysmin still in the window, to Bartrum with Grandmother Thriss behind him, and down to Aselya.

His cheeks worked and he spat. Not on her, but close enough some droplets sullied her hand. He nudged the muslin, fallen in the dirt. “Little is not nothing. If you have a palmful of the ashes, I’ll leave you the grain and take that as my due.” His mouth twisted. “Despite you getting the better end of the bargain.”

Aselya stared up at him. He believed that. Really and truly, he believed giving up more of Firall left them with the better bargain.

Despair made her limbs go leaden. She hadn’t realized till that moment that some wizened part of her had hoped to make him understand.

It was a waste of her time to try. He never would.

She rose to her feet, did not let herself wince at the bruise that surely was forming along her thigh. “I will get what you seek.”

---

The last of Firall’s ashes in hand, the grain seller departed. The neighbors went back to their business after a few shoulder-squeezes and hugs.

Ever and always, life must continue.

Aselya led the children to the back of the tenement. To the garden a few of the neighbors tended.

Among the plants were lentils.

The small, oblong leaves, barely the size of Aselya’s pinky fingernail, stretched toward the sunlight. No fruiting yet, but lentils grew fast under the right conditions.

And Firall had always been an excellent nurturer.

“Lean down,” Aselya whispered to the children, even though they’d already done so. “Listen close.”

She joined her children on the ground, interlaced her fingers with theirs, was gratified when Bartrum tightened his grip and nestled closer to her.

The lentil leaves were whispering, not in outright song, but their leaves swayed in time to The best auntie, most blessed auntie, the auntiest auntie of all.

“That’s lovely, Firall,” Aselya said when the leaves stopped swaying. She smiled, not a gibbous-moon keen but a small, tight one, the type she’d made when trying to stifle it, to set a good example for the children. “Now, sing the tavern song about the aubergine and the melons.”

The neighbors found Aselya laughing while her twelve-year-old and her eight-year-old roared at the top of their voices about an aubergine’s explosion. And for the first time, it seemed a good thing, or at least a tolerable one, a truth the three of them could wrap their own lives around: that Firall’s death would continue, too.

 

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Host Commentary

…aaaaand welcome back. That was “The Worth of Ashes” by Amanda Helms, and if you enjoyed that then there are two other episodes in our archives with a story from Amanda, though weirdly both of them are doubles. Episode 906 included “The House, The Witch, and Sugarcane Stalks”, and episode 506 from Artemis Rising 5 included “Starr Striker Should Remain Capitol City’s Resident Superhero, by Keisha Cole, 10th Grade Student”. If you pop on over to Cast of Wonders, there are five more stories there, including the brilliantly titled “Mr Quacky in Space”; and, of course, there’s more on Amanda’s website, amandahelms.com

On today’s story, “The Worth of Ashes”, Amanda says: This story began its life as a flash piece I wrote in 2024 from a prompt about unusual marketplaces — not that there is one wherein people barter ashes of loved ones, but I started thinking about what else someone might barter. Add in a bunch of feelings about the devaluing of “women’s work,” grief, parenting and family, and it soon came clear that this story needed more space than flash.

Thank you, Amanda, for the story and those thoughts. It’s been a minute since we’ve talked grief, hasn’t it? And what a wonderful exploration, and expression, this story is.

I don’t know as there’s anything else that shapes you like grief does, both in the days and moments immediately after but also the ripples that still brush the shoreline of your consciousness years later. The idea that carrying enough ashes would let you still hear that person’s voice… it’s a beautiful metaphor, because when you’re grieving it feels like you are carrying that person with you everywhere you go: that their loss infects every moment, and you find yourself standing in the supermarket wondering how everyone is carrying on as normal when this shattering loss has just happened? Don’t they know? And you catch sight of someone from behind wearing the same jumper they used to, or overhear someone calling a name they’d have used, and you feel like you can’t ever let go of this, because as suffocating as the grief is, it’s all you have left. You would hold the pillow down over your own face, just because it still smells of them.

If ashes did work that way, I don’t know as many of us would have the strength to leave them behind, to part with them at all. It would be a wonderful and a terrible thing, a sweet gift that would trap us like molasses and stop us moving forward. I wish it were real. I’m so glad it’s not.

Because grief, while necessary, should never become a cage. Bar a few narcissists, I’m sure, would anyone want their death to become a prison for their loved ones? Would anyone want those still alive to stop living? It’s trite, perhaps, and a cliché, but if so only because it bears repeating: the best way to honour the dead is to live for them. To move on, to move forward, to make the most of what is before you and not turn away out of a sense of loyalty to someone who is already gone.

It is, perhaps, foolish to ever declare an artistic choice as perfect, but nevertheless: I fully believe Amanda’s ending here was perfect. To commit the ashes to the soil for the lentils to grow, so that life might come from death: not just life for the plants, but for the family that will eat them, and in eating them not just survive but live, eating what they want and not what is merely sufficient.

Death is the inescapable heart of the human experience: the certain knowledge of our own mortality and all our loved ones around us, and that rage against the dying of the light, shapes everything. You, too, will know grief: but I hope you also find the path to transmute it into something good, something that will grow, something that will carry and support you to better things and a life after death.