Code to Extinction

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They buried his mother under a bruised sunset of purple, red and ochre.

It had taken the better part of a week to dig the grave. A task made strenuous and painstakingly slow by the ground’s constant state of permafrost. Through a process of lighting a bonfire, letting it burn for hours and then shifting the coals to the side, they were able to dig, inch by inch into the soil until the hole was finally big enough to hold the crude hewn coffin. When it was all done, they all went inside his father’s log hut, and he was left all alone.

Ilya Yezhov stared at the raised mound of soil and snow where his mother now lay. It seemed like the pitiful evidence of a wretched life. His solemn blue-gray eyes, almost silver in the shade of the horizon, remained dry, but his throat felt the unfamiliar thickness of grief choking him. She was the only one who’d ever been kind to him and he would miss her. Oymyakon was a hard place to live, and his family had been dominated by hard men.

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