“It’s all for the feast tonight. After all, some supplies won’t last the winter so we eat them now, in honor of our ancestors.”
Jame had seen small shrines in nearly every lodge—simple things, usually, with a candle and a swag of field flowers, sometimes with a favorite weapon or tool weighing down the whole.
“The dead are fortunate to be remembered.”
Hatch laughed. “Well, they don’t like it when we forget. D’you remember last year when Grunda brought nothing to the feast?”
The children crowed with laughter. “Great-grandpa Grundi made her sit on his lap all evening, or so we heard. She’s such a pig, though, that she probably crumbled his poor, old thighs.”
“I don’t understand. He came . . . out?”
“Why, so do they all, except for a few who just want peace. We give them that at night’s end.”
Jame was considerably puzzled by all of this, but supposed that she would learn in time.
By now it had grown dark. Torches sparkled by every door, mirroring the starry sky, and a bright circle of them surrounded the central lodge.
Shouts sounded and the bellow of cows. Chingetai had returned, victorious, from his cattle raid. He met Gran Cyd before her lodge amid cheers, but she folded her arms and tapped her gilded foot.
“My housebond. You were supposed to hunt to the north, not raid to the south.”
He threw his arms wide, as if seeking the village’s judgment. “Is this my greeting? See what fine beasts I have brought to enrich your herd! As to the north, how many days would you have us freeze on the heights, empty-handed? I tell you, the yackcarn have gone south by a different route this year. We will raid and trap and hunt all winter to fill your pots. Trust me!”
“Every time you say that, something terrible happens. In the meanwhile, we have guests.”
The Noyat shoved his way to the fore, swelling like a bullfrog with importance, but Chingetai waved him off. “No talk. Tonight, we feast!” He turned his back, pretending not to see Jame.
Merikit were streaming toward the central lodge, bearing steaming pots and laden platters.
Infants were tugged off to bed.
The children set up a whine. They wanted to attend too, but weren’t old enough. Prid returned to the maidens’ quarters outside the pale, although she would clearly rather have stayed with Jame to greet the dead. Jame was sorry to see her go. She felt swept away in a tide of strangers, not all of whom meant her well.
The interior of the lodge was an amphitheater with steep steps plunging down in dizzying concentric rings to what must have been almost the foot of the hill, barely above water level. Earthen ledges provided seats, each one backed by a kind of wicker cell some three feet square. Those above sat either cross-legged or with their feet propped on the box below.
Jame found herself beside the twins’ Ma and Da who welcomed her but, to her relief, had put aside their teasing ways. Torches threw twisted bars of light on a silent, hunched figure in the cell under her boots. The amphitheater filled with some six hundred adults sitting in family groups with spaces between them—for latecomers, Jame supposed. Voices rose in a roar as Merikit shouted back and forth across the echoing space.
Below, an ox turned on a fire-spit. Tungit and the other shamans sat so close to the flames that Jame could see the sheen of sweat on their tattooed, half-naked bodies. Chingetai was there too with other village notables, judging by their rich, no doubt stifling clothes. So was the Noyat guest.
Ale, mead, and beer passed from hand to hand around the benches in huge silver ewers. Jame accepted some ale in the wooden mug that Ma considerately supplied. The heady odor of the brew, the heat, and the light made her head spin. She opened the collar of her jacket, then closed it again as Ma leaned in to her, giggling.
Gran Cyd strode out onto the hall floor, magnificently in scarlet wool threaded with red-gold to match her much-braided, flowing hair. She raised her voice like a trumpet and the hall hushed to hear.
“We are born, we live, we die, and life goes on. The tribe is one. The tribe is immortal!”
Mugs began to beat the benches in time to her words, a solid, unified thump that shook the earth.
“Hear me, my Merikit! Hear and repeat: Now is the season, now is the weather, for the living and the dead to feast together!”
Thump, thump, thump, went the mugs, and voices rose to shout with her:
“Now is the season, now is the weather, the living and the dead feast together!”
At the last word, a roar, the torches flickered as one.
Jame turned to ask Da a question, and found sitting beside them a dark figure that hadn’t been there before. All around, the gaps had filled and most if not quite all of the wicker cells stood open. Rathillien swung on the hinge of the seasons, life to death, death to life. Now she placed the smell. It was the sour, acrid breath of the watch-weirdling, multiplied by hundreds.
“This is my mother’s uncle,” said Da, introducing them.
“He looks . . . er . . . well, considering. Is this what happens to all your dead?”
“No, unfortunately. The trick is to catch their last breath and seal it in with them. Sometimes we aren’t quick enough.”
And sometimes, thought Jame, they probably suffocated someone prematurely. Was that so different, though, from those Highborn who chose the pyre when they felt themselves to be failing? She saluted Da’s great-uncle, who appeared to be among the lucky ones.
Somebody had put a bowl into her lap and others kept plopping things into it, a wide range of food, all mixed up. As hungry as she was, Jame felt edgy about eating it, especially when an ox’s boiled eye bobbed to the surface.
Da plucked out the latter and brandished it. “One of two! One of two! Who else joins our lucky crew?”
Someone on the other side of the lodge waved back. “Two of two! Two of two! Good fortune both to me and you!”
The lodge echoed like a cave by the sea, voices rising and falling, many laughing, a few grown maudlin, weeping on a leather-encased shoulder or patting beloved features sealed with wax.
Da shouted something.
“What?”
“I said, the smoke and drying herbs help, but occasionally one goes soft—you know, like a big, bagged pudding. They don’t come out much, though. Too embarrassed.”
Jame put aside her bowl.
Was it so much worse, though, than the way her own people treated their dead? They thought they were being kind too, with their pyres and banners, never mind the souls trapped by blood in the latter. Did one cling to the dead for the deads’ sake or for that of the living? There had to be some way to do justice to both.
The wicker cage behind her was rattling.
“It must be for you,” said Ma.
With some trepidation, Jame unlatched the door and found herself nose to nose with the Earth Wife. Behind her was not the far wall of the wicker cell but the interior of her own lodge.
“I fell asleep,” she said, with ale strong on her breath, slurring her words. “They’re coming! Stock and stone help me, they’re almost here!”
“Who is?”
“Why, the yackcarn, of course! They’ll be at the valley’s mouth within minutes. I tell you, I’ve never heard them run so mad before! They’ll trample everything in their path.”
“Which, of course, includes us.”
“Tell Gran Cyd. She has to get everyone inside the palisade.”
“I will. Here.” She scooped up Jorin, who had been nosing at her abandoned bowl for tidbits, and thrust him into Mother Ragga’s arms. “Keep him safe.” Ounce and Earth Wife tipped over backward into her lodge. The wicker door clattered shut after them.
Jame turned and took in the merrily seething hall. How best to reach the floor and Gran Cyd? There was only one quick route that she could see. Over the startled cries of her hosts, she started jumping down from bench to bench, landing on heads, shoulders, and black bundles that cracked like twigs under her weight or occasionally squished. The last bit she floundered to fall sprawling at Gran Cyd’s feet. The floor juddered under her hands.