BY HOLLY PFEIFFER
Copyright is held by the author.
SHEK SPENT his days tending the garden. Admittedly, it was rather small, and his plants were few, but it was better than last season when there had been nothing at all growing in the shadow of the cave he called home.
The tamarisk bushes were coming along rather well. They were defiant plants that plunged their taproots deep into the earth for groundwater. But he was proudest of the cherry tomatoes. Cherry tomatoes don’t grow in the desert, but he’d fashioned pots and scaffolding for them, gathered mineral-rich clay from the pool inside the cave, and mixed it with the soil in the pots. Their first fruits were now tiny green buds. In a few weeks’ time, they would be big enough to eat.
Not that he could eat. He was a golem. Golems are sustained by purpose, not food, which is why he liked the cherry tomatoes best. Unlike the tamarisk, they would always need him, and ever since he’d completed his kivun, he was sorely lacking in purpose.
He supposed the cherry tomatoes would go to Ethan, the overseer of the golems staying at the cave. If he could have given them to some other human, he would have.
Shek was on one knee, trying to determine whether or not his lone Jericho rose was coming out of its dormancy phase, when Zeppur came padding up to him. It was rare that a golem was built in non-human form, but there were occasional outliers. Zeppur was one of them. His kivun had been to serve as the beloved dog of a rather anxious man who didn’t want to see his pet die before him, which is why he’d commissioned Zeppur from the golemery in dog shape.
“Hey, Shek, is gardening going well?” he asked.
“Hi, Zeppur,” Shek responded in his deep, rumbling voice. “Well enough.”
“You want to come inside? Ethan’s prepared a big vat of clay for us to patch ourselves up with.”
“You just want me to help you get the itchy spots behind your ears,” Shek said knowingly.
“Yeah, and everywhere else, too. I don’t have opposable thumbs. And besides, you have the most nimble hands of anyone here.”
Shek held up his hands. They were huge, inelegant, blocky formations. He’d always secretly suspected his maker had been in a rush to finish them. He thought about protesting, but the sun had been beating down on the broad length of his back for an hour now, and his clay was feeling a little stiff. “Fine,” he said, and Zeppur began to wag his tail.
“You’re a good friend, you know that?”
As they made their way back around to the entrance of the cave, Zeppur chattered incessantly, which was his custom ever since his owner had died. Shek knew that he had been saving it up. Even though all golems are sentient, Zeppur had limited himself to barking and growling as his means of communication because of his kivun.
They reached the mouth of the cave and Zeppur padded ahead of him into its cool and welcoming darkness. The air within was moist, and Shek could already feel his clay joints loosening. They passed the outer chambers that made up the private rooms of individual golems and headed straight for the central cavern. Most of the other golems were gathered around the fresh-water spring that burbled up from the ground, either lounging or patting themselves down with clay from Ethan’s vat. On the walls, ancient lanterns cast a warm and mellow light over them.
Ethan, obsequious man that he was, seemed to be trawling up more clay for the vat, even though it was still mostly full.
He glanced up from his work and grinned as Shek and Zeppur approached.
“Hi, gents, I’m glad you could join us.”
“Hi, Ethan. Thanks for this. Looks like everyone needs it,” Zeppur said — and that acknowledgement was six word warmer than Shek was willing to be towards the overseer. He simply trundled his heavy body up to the vat, scooped some of the clay into a bucket, and retreated to his customary ledge overlooking the spring. Zeppur followed him there.
“You gotta be a little nicer to Ethan,” he advised.
“Why? He’s nice enough for the both of us,” Shek pointed out. Zeppur sat back on his haunches and appraised him.
“I know you miss Shelamach. We all do — well, at least, in a sense. But we have to get used to Ethan. Even overseers retire.”
Shek let out a great rumbling sigh, dipped his hand into the clay, and began to knead what he had scooped out into a ball. He heaved himself down and started with his most finicky spot — the back of his left knee. He spread the clay in thick, even layers over it, periodically extending it and retracting it to test the sensation. “I wish we didn’t have an overseer, that’s the problem,” he admitted after a time.
“The city appoints them. Nothing we can do.”
“Yeah, and Shelamach understood that. He left us alone.”
“Ethan is new on the job, that’s all. As time passes, he’ll learn the ropes.”
“And he’ll learn faster if we don’t set a precedent.”
“What precedent?”
“‘What precedent?’” Shek said in his best impression of Zeppur, which was rather poor because he was unable to modulate the key of his voice. “Look, do you want me to help you get the backs of your ears, or not?” he asked.
“I do,” Zeppur said.
“Then drop this.”
Zeppur sighed. “If you’re going to be a tyrant about it, fine.”
Shek’s left knee was feeling limber again, so he prepared a smaller ball of clay for the back of his less finicky right knee.
***
Shek knelt beside one of his cherry tomato plants. He gently pinched a delicate leaf between two fingers and rumbled his discontentment. White patches ate at the smooth, green surface. Somehow, despite the desert heat, the plant had caught blight. He was lucky he had discovered the disease before it spread, but he would have to prune the plant and move it away from the others.
“Wow, Shek. Looks like it’s really coming along out here,” an unfamiliar voice said. Zeppur was typically the only golem with the audacity to bother Shek while he was gardening. This, however, was not a golem. It was Ethan. Shek turned slowly to look over his shoulder, and just as slowly, he turned back. “Uh, Shek? Is something wrong? That plant. It looks, well, blighted.”
“Yes.”
“That’s a shame.”
“It will be remedied,” Shek murmured, shifting his wide back so that the plant was no longer in Ethan’s line of sight.
“You know, my father owns an olive grove. We grow other things, too, in the off season, and we devised a treatment for blight that might — ”
“I do not require your assistance,” Shek cut him off.
“You’re going to at least prune it, right?”
In his gradual — but very certain — way, Shek got off his knees and turned to face Ethan. He towered over the man. “Why are you here?” he asked.
Ethan gazed up at him, smile fading. He lifted his hands in surrender, and said, “It just seemed like a good time for us to talk, that’s all. Maybe get to know each other a little bit better. You’re the only golem I haven’t had the chance to speak with personally since I arrived.”
“I don’t want to talk to you,” he said. “And I don’t want you in my garden. Get out.”
He took a step towards Ethan. Ethan took a step back.
“It’s as I suspected, then. You don’t like me,” Ethan murmured.
“Did you not hear me when I asked you to get out?” he said, voice resounding.
“I heard you fine. But I was just trying to help.”
The man had backbone, Shek would give him that. When he spoke this time, his voice was at its deepest resonance. “The very last thing I want is help. This is my garden. These are my plants. You won’t take them from me, too. They’re mine, and I would rather disobey the commandments written on my script than let you tamper with them.”
Shek knew his eyes were glowing red. It was how the Aksamit family had commissioned him so that he would terrify intruders should they ever threaten the ancestral home. As a result, Ethan finally gave in.
“OK, Shek,” he said. “Have it your way.”
And he left the garden
***
“You’re a lucky gol, Shek,” Zeppur said sorrowfully. “Threatening a human? That’s pretty serious.”
“Leave me alone, Zeppur,” Shek rumbled from the slab in the corner of his private cave. Zeppur cast a dog-shaped shadow from the entrance.
“All I’m saying is, you should apologize to Ethan. He’s not going to report you, but you’re definitely not in his good graces anymore,” Zeppur said.
“How did you even find out about it?” Shek asked.
“The guy has to talk to someone. And, well, I talk more than the rest of us.”
“You certainly do,” Shek concurred.
“In other news, I’m feeling like a game of fetch. I found a nice round pebble the other day, and I was hoping you would throw it for me. What do you say?”
“No,” Shek said.
“Come on. It would get you out of this cave.”
“I want to be in my cave,” Shek told him.
“Well, you can’t stay here forever
“I won’t stay here forever,” Shek said. “Eventually, my script will wear out, and I’ll die.”
“Wow. You need to lighten up.”
“I’ve been waiting for years now. I don’t know why it hasn’t. My kivun has long been served.” Shek closed his eyes. “I’m ready to go.”
“If you’re still here, there’s a reason,” Zeppur said.
“I don’t know how you remain so optimistic.”
“And I don’t know how you remain such a bummer. Look around you. There’s a whole world, and everything in it fascinating, down to the smallest pebble. Speaking of pebbles, are you sure you don’t want to play fetch?”
“I’m sure.”
“Suit yourself,” Zeppur said, padding out of the room.
***
Golems do sleep. And even stranger, golems dream. It’s something no one has been able to explain, and Shek wished it were as impossible as the scientists made it out to be. If he couldn’t dream, maybe he would stop remembering his life before his kivun had been served.
But the girls still came to him whenever he fell asleep.
Five Aksamit girls, all of them a little plump, a little noisy, always smiling and bellowing with laughter despite their gapped teeth. Their parents were the warm and generous people who had daughters like that. In other words, the entire family was unusually worthy of a golem’s protection. Shek had spent his life in service to them—and willingly, too.
It was easy for the Aksamit girls to fall in love, and so, one by one, they left the family home, their parents, and Shek who had protected them, to start lives of their own. When the matriarch and patriarch passed, Shek’s kivun was complete because no heir bore the Aksamit name and it was the Aksamit family to whom he had been pledged.
Some golems simply died when their kivun had been served. But some lived, perhaps for many years, and because they had been built for only one job, they were sent into retirement.
That had been the fate of Shek, and all he had left now was his garden, and his dreams.
***
The blight had spread. The leaves of three of his five cherry tomato plants were mottled with white patches, thick and fuzzy. He knew that, if the other two weren’t showing signs of it now, they would soon. It was out of his control.
He didn’t know what to do. He knelt down in front of the three affected plants, checking for one leaf, any leaf that wasn’t affected by the blight. Meanwhile, the tamarisk bushes with their shrill, pink blossoms thrived on without him, sucking up groundwater through their sturdy taproots. A dry, desert wind blew through the rocky corridor behind the caves where he had planted his garden, and he wondered if his script would burn out right then and there. He almost wished it would.
He also wondered if anyone would come out to bother him in the meantime. Maybe Zeppur, or Ethan, but no, he had made it clear to them that he wanted to be left alone. They knew this garden was his — even if he wasn’t doing a very good job of taking care of it.
Both of them were a nuisance. No, Ethan was worse than that. Ethan wanted to steal his garden from him. Ethan wanted to make him irrelevant. Ethan had offered to cure his plants for him, as if he was incapable of —
But he was incapable, wasn’t he? And Ethan knew a cure for blight that he didn’t.
If the five Aksamit girls had been in danger beyond his ability to protect them, he would have gone to the neighbouring golems for help. The important thing would have been that the girls were safe, not that he was the one to keep them that way. But it felt different with the cherry tomato plants. It felt different now that he had threatened Ethan, now that he was alone.
He glanced towards the desert — miles of desolate, wind-blasted rock. He could just leave. He could just walk away from it all, and perhaps when he was out there, his script would finally get the message that it was time to wear out.
Or, he could go back inside the cave and ask Ethan for help.
***
Ethan sat on the edge of the spring with seven or so golems of different shapes and sizes gathered around him, listening to him play the kinnor harp. Many leaned back against the surrounding rocks with their glowing eyes closed, enjoying the steam that rose from the pool.
Shek shifted uncomfortably in the shadows, readied himself, and stepped out. Ethan’s fingers hesitated on the strings of the harp as he saw him.
“You play very well,” Shek said.
“It’s nice of you to say so,” Ethan replied with a nod. It was then that Shek noticed Zeppur lying on one of the ledges, silent for once as he waited to see what would happen next.
“I should go,” Shek rumbled, averting his gaze. “I do not want to interrupt the enjoyment of your music.”
Ethan leaned his kinnor harp against a nearby rock. “Is there something you need, Shek?” he asked softly.
Shek was silent for a long time before he spoke. “I need your help,” he managed to say. “It’s my tomatoes.”
***
Ethan had gone back to his quarters before joining Shek outside of the cave. He now wore a cloth bag over his shoulder as they walked the perimeter.
“Did the blight get to the other plants?” he asked at last, reaching up to mop the sweat from his brow.
“Yes, it did,” Shek replied solemnly. He paused for another long moment before asking, “Are you willing to help me after what I said to you?”
“I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t,” Ethan replied.
When they reached the garden, Ethan set down his bag and began examining the plants, squinting at the spiry branches and the leaves, and taking pinches of the soil from each pot to sniff. Finally, he turned back to Shek, and said, “We should be able to save them.”
Shek’s limbs audibly creaked as he relaxed. “Thank you,” he said.
“Don’t thank me yet. There’s still a lot of work to do, and I’m not going to do it alone.”
They had to prune the worst of the leaves and fruits, but Ethan insisted they keep some of them. After that began the brunt of the work: changing the soil in the pots. First, there was the delicate process of removing each plant from its home. They kept each on its vine while wrapping the roots in damp linen cloth that Ethan had brought from inside. Shek then sent Ethan to gather nutrient-rich clay from the pool while he dug up new dirt from under the hard-baked ground. When Ethan returned, they mixed the two and stood over their pile of dark, fragrant soil.
“Now for the final ingredient,” Ethan said. He knelt down and rummaged around in his bag for a minute, and then pulled out a large ceramic jar. “It’s copper, predominantly,” he explained. “It will keep the blight from returning.”
Shek gazed down at him with mild curiosity. “How did you know to bring this to the caves?” he asked.
Ethan shrugged. “I was planning on doing some gardening of my own, to tell you the truth. They bring a monthly ration of grain and dried meats and vegetables from the city for the overseer, but there’s nothing like fresh produce. Of course, you had already started a garden, so I gave up on it, but I still had my supplies. I never mix soil without putting in a little copper to keep away the blight.”
“I see,” Shek said. “You will be entitled to these cherry tomatoes once the plants recover.”
Ethan waved him off. “They’re yours to do with as you please.”
“I do not eat,” Shek murmured sternly. “I was going to give them to you anyway.”
“That’s very generous,” Ethan replied.
“I know.”
They carefully repotted the five plants, and Ethan explained that the cloth would molder away in the soil and do no harm to the plants. “In a week, the blight will be gone, and you still might even get a few fruits in this cycle,” he said.
“I will hold you to that,” Shek told him, looking him in the eyes for the first time all day. But once he had, he fell still. Ethan’s brow furrowed.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, even though Shek’s expression had not—and indeed could not—change.
“You have done a great deal for me,” he said. “even though I treated you unfairly.”
“I know how much this garden means to you, Shek,” Ethan said, which was not what he had been expecting.
“It is everything to me now,” he agreed.
“It doesn’t have to be,” Ethan said, looking him in the eyes.
“My kivun is served. This is all I have.”
“You have us,” Ethan reminded him, and Shek inclined his head in silent question. “You have me, and Zeppur, and all the other golems.”
“But I do not serve you,” Shek said. “I am… a burden to you. You have had to help me.”
Ethan, rather abruptly after many hours of sobriety, smiled at him. “On the contrary. You have done me a great service. You have given me my purpose, my kivun.” And suddenly, Shek understood. “After all,” Ethan added, “What is purpose without people?”
Shek shifted his weight to one side of his body and looked at the ground. “I have been alone for too long,” he admitted.
“We should do something about it,” Ethan said.
“The plants are safe now,” Shek pointed out. “We should return to the cave where it is cool.”
Ethan chuckled and slung his bag over his shoulder. “Now, that, I can agree to.”
***
Holly Pfeiffer is a student at Belmont University, Nashville, U.S. When she’s not writing, she can be found reading, usually while sipping a kitschy seasonal coffee. You can learn more about her work at hollympfeiffer.com.
