The Candlewalk
Sniffles filled the air as four stern, older street rats carefully settled the blanket-wrapped body in a cart a Lells merchant loaned them.
Those sellers who had candles handed them to the clustered urchins, and they lit them from a fruit oil lamp. Extras, for those that burned to nubs on the way, filled a sack held by Rin. He nodded thanks to the sympathetic merchants, and on his cue, two older rats grabbed the cart handle and pulled the vehicle into motion.
Behind them and the body, the street rats walked with the candles, silent in mourning. Those in the streets stepped aside to let them pass, some indifferent, some sad that another young life ended so tragically.
In this document:
History
Rin, then as now, was a curious sort. When the Lady gave him a chance to learn to read and sate his curiosity through books, he never looked back. After a deadly winter in which several street rats he knew succumbed to the cold, Rin began to wonder about the Pit. He had read about funerals in a couple of the books the Lady gave him, but he'd never experienced one himself. All the dead during his short life ended up thrown over a bridge into the Pit, and left for the carrion lizards to eat. The Lady searched and found a too-dry history about ancient funeral rites. Rin slogged through it and discovered that, after their bloody victory over Jilvayna, the invading Dentherions threw the slaughtered royal family and their retainers into the courtyard of a temple that sat beneath the once-grand bridge that led from noble mansions to the royal palace. They lit the bodies on fire, and added to the pyre until they incinerated all the dead. Within the first fifty years of Dentheria's rule, an edict was issued that Jiy residents could no longer conduct funerals. They had to throw their deceased kin and friends into the Pit, the name Stone Street residents called the site of the pyre. The palace started by denying the poor, and sent guards to make sure the dead were thrown into the Pit rather than given last rites. Then the puppet king progressed up the social hierarchy chain until only he and his favored retainers remained the sole people able to have funerals. The public outcry came too little, too late, and with guards taking bodies and dumping them, uncaring whether they harmed distraught families who tried to stop them, helplessness descended. On top of the other depravities, this act broke the people and Dentheria gloated at their success in subduing the populace.
Dead bodies rotting in the open was a health hazard. Dentheria brought in carrion lizards to eat the flesh and provided the puppet king with special flying objects called birds that doused the area in a spray that destroyed corpse-created bacteria.
The spray made water in the Stone and Grey Streets undrinkable, but it did as intended; no one got sick from Pit nastiness.
The arrangement seemed so fantastic to those outside Jiy, they believed the Pit was an urban legend. It did not matter how often those who lived in the city insisted on it, those outside refused to believe that the puppet rulers could behave in such a manner.
Families who have the funds smuggle their loved ones out of the city for burial. If caught, a heavy fine can bankrupt them and put them on the streets.
The Walk
For two centuries, Jiy threw their dead over the bridge and into the Pit. Since rites were outlawed, any signs of grieving were kept indoors and only among the closest friends and family. Except for the street rats. The book did not say why or when, but the street rats defied the palace and mourned their deceased friends as they walked them to the Pit. Rin knew this; he had participated in too many during his young life. The processions began with a few close friends carrying the body, or borrowing a cart from a sympathetic person of better means. The friends walked/pushed the body to the bridge overlooking the Pit, and said goodbye before pushing the deceased over the railing. The palace did not interfere, and the book's author guessed that it was too bad of a look to hurt homeless kids for carrying a friend to the Pit.
The Candlewalk
Rin spoke about what he read with his mentor, the old thief Chinder. Chinder chuckled over his curiosity, and other rats joined the conversation. Within a night, they had decided they were going to add another element to the Walk, one that highlighted the solemnness of a too-young child in dire straits succumbing to the streets. Feeling morbid but knowing there would be another funeral for a Grey Streets rat, Rin prepared. When a disabled child in the care of Copper died of complications, he retrieved a sack of candles he had stolen over the weeks. Using a fruit oil lamp hanging on a Lells merchant stall, he lit a candle and handed it to his friend Lykas, and the next to Jandra. Other rats crowded around, wanting a candle, and by the time Copper lifted the body into a borrowed cart, they were ready for the procession. The urchins walked behind the cart with Copper, talking in soft whispers about the good things in the deceased's too-short life, and when they reached the bridge, they slid the body over the edge and then dropped the candles after him. Saying a final goodbye, they returned to the Lells, pulling the empty cart.
Word spread quickly from one district's street rat population to the next. Within a month, the Walks throughout western Jiy became Candlewalks, sometimes with the kids speaking good things about the deceased, sometimes with reverent silence, before they reached the Pit and slid the body over the edge, throwing the candles after.
In the Lells, merchants now keep stubs of candles and hand them to rats when the time comes for a Walk. They see it as a small charity during a time of duress.
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