'I don't suppose your brother's going to join us?'
Fern shrugged.
Akaisha went back to ladling stew into bowls. Carnelian watched her and saw how haunted she looked.
'At least we'll soon have plenty to eat,' said one of the youngsters, going pale as her mother glared at her.
As they ate the only sound was their slurping. The rest of the Grove was unnaturally silent, as if even the mother trees themselves were listening to the heaveners dying.
Poppy had to shake Carnelian to wake him. The first thing he saw was that she had been crying.
'Everyone's going down to butcher the heaveners.'
'Surely just the women,' Carnelian said, knowing it was a false hope.
Poppy shook her head. 'No, Carnie, Mother Whin said the men must help too.'
To give himself a chance to find courage to face the day, he sent her to fetch some water. He had slept badly. The sorry, plaintive heavener cries had haunted his dreams and his half-wakings.
When Poppy returned, he thanked her, drank the water and then rose. Akaisha, Fern and the others were there: men and women, the children too. The women were carrying the scythes the men had made for them the night before. The young were subdued. Fern looked miserable; Akaisha, aged.
'You didn't sleep, my mother?' Carnelian asked her as everyone began moving down the hill.
She looked up at him angrily. 'Did you?'
Fern put his arm about her shoulders and she leaned into him.
They were walking along the Blooding when the massacre came into sight: mountains of hide beneath swirling scavenger clouds.
'So much meat,' Sil said, sadly.
The Bloodwood Tree had been partially pushed over by a heavener that lay against it like a landslide. Its neck formed a dyke running for some distance on the other side of the earthbridge.
'Can we go over?' one child begged, her voice shrilly echoed by others.
'Over to the Killing Field.'
Other children took up the cry. 'Killing Field, over to the Killing Field.'
Gaping, people were clambering up the rampart to peer at the monsters. Ravan was there with Krow and many other youths. They began throwing stones and no one stopped them. Carnelian watched them bounce here and there off the carcasses, causing ravens to screech and hop into the air. He saw a stone roll down the back of a heavener, eventually being swallowed by a brown, blood pool.
They must be dead,' cried Ravan, hurling another stone to prove it.
At last, gingerly, he led others across the narrow earth bridge, holding their scythes in front of them. They tapped the hide wall of the neck then stepped back, anticipating it lifting into the sky, but it might as well have been the trunk of a fallen cedar. Ravan lunged forward, swinging his scythe, tearing a red gash in the wall so deep it exposed white vertebrae. Soon he was joined by others, hacking at the flesh while up to their ankles in blood.
The Bluedancing were evicted from their camp in the Eastgarden. Huge fires were lit and trestles made and set above them. The rituals were to be maintained as best they could. There was not enough red ochre and so
Ginkga commanded the Bluedancing to paint their faces with blood. Hunks of meat were carried on bending poles and dumped on any spare piece of ground, then the Bluedancing were made to fall on them: slicing, hacking, tearing the flesh into chunks which were then packed on to the trestles. It was Osidian who had suggested they smoke the meat, declaring that sun-curing would be too slow. Soon, to feed the fires, they were forced to fell some of the magnolias running alongside the Outditch. As well as the Bluedancing, the whole Tribe had joined the race to harvest as much as they could before the heaveners began to rot.
Beneath palls of reeking smoke, taking a rest from the bloody work, Carnelian wandered with Poppy among the fires in a daze. Entrails were draped across the ferns like fishing nets. Expanses of hide were laid out; scarlet rugs dense with flies. In one corner of the ferngarden they were throwing everything they did not want. Much was being put onto that brown hill that usually they kept. With such an abundance of flesh, only the better cuts were being saved.
Telling Poppy to wait for him, Carnelian picked his way across the earthbridge which was slick and treacherous with mud. When he reached the Killing Field, it seemed he was standing on a sunset-reddened strand. Carcasses lay like so many beached ships, half stripped of their hulls of flesh, exposing their white ribbing. The ground was covered by a flotsam of entrails and membranes. Nearby a head as large as a man gave him a macabre grin, its lips pulled back and hanging loose. Carnelian reflected that that head had once woven among the clouds like a bird. The neck that had stretched a link between earth and sky was nailed by its vertebrae to the ground. Ruddy children scurried, laughing and shouting amidst that architecture of death, playing hide-and-seek in the caverns of the ruined heaveners.
'Enough is enough,' Carnelian said under his breath. He decided that that evening he would betray Osidian's scheme to Akaisha.
Night had already fallen when the Tribe returned exhausted to their hearths. In the face of so many people, the Elders had suspended the requirement to wash underneath the Old Bloodwood Tree. Carnelian's hearthmates' skin was caked with blood; their hair matted with gore.
Complaints rising from near the water jar drew everyone to go and see what was going on.
'It hasn't been refilled,' Akaisha said, peering into it, and then began to cry. Everyone stared open-mouthed as she stumbled off towards her hollow. Carnelian felt queasy. He must follow her and betray Osidian.
'Who was meant to fetch water today?' demanded Whin.
Everyone looked at each other but no one seemed to have an answer. Carnelian was not the only one to notice the guilty expressions on the men's faces.
'Do any of you know?'
'We were ordered not to go, my mother.'
'By whom?'
'Father Galewing.'
Whin looked weary, confused. Carnelian grew uneasy, suspecting Osidian was behind this. He realized he had not seen him for a long time. He looked back to the rootstair. Carnelian had imagined Fern was lagging behind him when he had returned with the others. A dark foreboding clutched him. His eyes met Sil's. He was sure they were sharing the same feeling.
'Did he tell you why?' asked Whin.
The men exchanged sidelong looks. It was obvious they were reluctant to speak.
Whin stepped towards them. 'Come on, out with it.'
'We were told to keep it to ourselves,' said one of them.
'So as not to worry anyone,' added another. Whin looked exasperated. 'What're you talking about?' The first man to have spoken looked to the others for permission. 'It's because of the Woading.'
Sil looked startled. 'Our neighbours, the Woading?' They've been threatening us for days.' Threatening you?' said Whin.
'Each day, the men they send to fetch water have grown in numbers.'
'And become more heavily armed,' added one of the others.
'Why have they suddenly chosen to interfere with us?'
The man shrugged. 'Our new earthwork's near where they traditionally come for water.'
'Didn't any of you think of telling the Master that that was likely to provoke them?'
Carnelian thought it unlikely Osidian had needed to be told.
The man shrugged. 'He had us dig it where the lagoon is narrowest and easy to cross.'
'What has this to do with our water supply?' demanded Whin.
The man looked at her anxiously. The Master feared the Woading might attack the hunts we send out to fetch water.'
'So we're to die of thirst instead?' 'It was to be only one day, my mother; so that we could all help making djada.' 'And tomorrow… ?'
'We'll go in force so that if they try anything, we'll be ready for them.'
'So you're all in on this?' said Whin looking round at the men.