“He took a damp cloth out of a wooden bowl and began cleaning the dried blood off our father’s belly. There was a lot of it, belly and blood. Soff and I released hands and stepped forward as well. As we got close my breath stopped in my chest. Having prepared four bodies for burial over the winter, we knew what to expect-the stiff, unyielding muscles, the cold skin, the blood that had congealed-but those experiences did nothing to prepare us for this.”
Maybe Braylar was right about my parents. Some things were better left unseen and unknown.
“I stopped at my father’s feet, afraid to move closer. His boots and the front of his pants were still covered with the reddish mud, the mud that clung to him when he fell forward. It was difficult to tell where mud ended and blood began.
“Soff was braver than I was, but only a little. She stopped at his waist, opposite Grubarr. The cloth on her face was rising and falling quickly. Grubarr continued working as if neither of us were there, wiping, wringing, wiping, wringing. Soff, said, very quietly, ‘He… are we going to bury him?’
“Grubarr didn’t look up, continued cleaning. ‘A simple grave, yes.’
“Soff reached out to touch our father but pulled her hand away. ‘And what will we bury with him? We will bury something, won’t we?’
“‘Yes,’” Grubarr said, wringing out the cloth. “‘All of us go with something, smallest to largest, youngest to oldest. Your mother, she’ll decide. She will include honeycomb, yes?’ He smiled at Soff but she didn’t return it. ‘If you have other suggestions, she’ll want to be aware of them, I think.’
“Soff nodded but said nothing else. A short time after, she asked, so quietly I could barely hear her, ‘What will we do… what will we do once you’ve cleaned him?’
“‘Hmmm. Nothing. Something. I’m unsure. The wound, it will be filled with paste, dill and ash, but I will do this. I’ll do most of what needs done. If there’s something I need from across the room, you’ll fetch this something, and if I need mixing, you’ll do this mixing. But little more. It’s enough that you are here. And here you be. So.’”
His ability to recall conversations so many years gone by was just short of wondrous. Was his memory simply that astute? Had the gravity of the occasion imprinted the words in him somewhere? Was he simply filling in missing pieces? Had Bloodsounder somehow brought his own memories into sharper relief?
I asked none of these though as he went on. “Grubarr finished wiping my father’s belly and dropped the cloth in the bowl of bloody water. I looked at the wound then and I couldn’t take my eyes off it. So small, so narrow, only two inches long. It was hard to believe this was enough to kill a man. And yet it had. So quickly. So very quickly.
“I remember thinking it was amazing that my father’s fat belly hadn’t stalled the blade, hadn’t saved him, and then I felt ashamed, bitterly ashamed. It seemed even in death I couldn’t respect him. And that was when I began to cry again. Feeling it come, I tried so hard to stop. I wanted so badly to be strong, to at least appear strong. But I could feel it slipping, all my strength washed away with the blood. I stared at the bottom of my father’s old boots, at the dried mud, tried to focus on that, to block the rest out, to think only of the mud, and how it was so close to raining, it might start any moment, and as soon as it did, there would be more mud, new mud, everywhere, the rain would turn the whole village, the whole world to mud. But it was no good. The tears fell, my nose began to run. I stepped back, began to shake. I bit my tongue and clenched my fists, my nails digging into my palms. But having found my tears again I couldn’t get rid of them.”
He recited this distantly, not quite like when he was narrating stolen memories of dead men, but not far off, either. If this was a confessional of sorts, it was devoid of passion or pain, as if it had happened to someone else.
“Soff saw me,” Braylar said, “and she started toward me, and then I began to sob. I fell forward on my knees, just as my father had a few days before, and I wished there was mud, mud I could swallow, drown myself in, but there was only dirt, and I grabbed handfuls of it, smashed it into my hair, my face, my eyes. Soff tried to pull my hands away, to hold me. And I could take no more of it. I climbed to my feet and burst out of the room, and the next, and the next, out of the longhouse. I ran into the woods, away from the village, ran until my lungs felt like they might split open in my chest, and then I continued to run, hoping they would, hoping they would rip and tear, and I would be the next one Grubarr would have to work on. But they didn’t, they only gave out. I fell over, and still my body wanted to cry, but there was no breath for it, so I lay there, wracked with silent sobs, wanting to die, feeling like I was, pounding the dirt because I couldn’t scream.
“It was only then that I realized where I’d run to. The grove of dying birch near our village. I had not gone nearly as far as I’d guessed. Having gotten some of my breath back, I stood there in the rain, suddenly angry. No, furious. At my father for getting killed, at the gods for allowing it, at my ancestors for creating him and me. I screamed at all of it, as new tears watered my face, and then I screamed at the futility of screaming at all.”
It was difficult to imagine the captain so overcome, but even more difficult imaging having to endure all this.
“I ran over to the closest standing birch, and kicked that, pushed it. The rotting tree groaned but didn’t fall. And so I retreated, ran at it again, hit it with my shoulder, with my head, and fell off it, bounced truly. Fell into the wet grass and looked up at it. But it was moving just then, albeit very slowly. It creaked, and groaned, and made all of the noise it could with its treeish voice, and then, with one last, wet crack, it fell. The rotten tree fell away from me, colliding with another as it went and taking that down too.
“My shoulder ached, snot bubbled out of my nose as my head pounded like a great drum, and I felt all the world like a gaping, pulsating tear, exposing all the tissues beneath, tissues that would die if they were open too long. I couldn’t have put it into those words then, but I was a wound that knew it must be cauterized, burnt until the blood stops flowing and the tissues blacken and close in on themselves. I didn’t have the words, but I knew-sensed perhaps-that that was what I must do.
“And so I got to my feet, ran to the next standing tree. I found a log alongside it, one of sturdier stuff than dead birch. I lifted the small log and clubbed the dying birch in front of me. I hit it, bits of peely white bark flying, again and again, until my hands blistered and split open and blood ran sticky across my palms, and then this tree fell as well. And it went on like this. I pushed and struck and screamed and cried, killing these dying trees, one after the other, killing them and cursing everything I could think to curse, over and over, clearing the already sparse glade like a maddened druid. And this went on, for how long I don’t know. But it continued until I could continue no more, until the wound was seared shut and a dozen more trees littered the ground around me.”
Braylar stopped for a moment, looking back and forth between us as if he had nearly forgotten there was an audience at all. Then he said, “Rather than help prepare my father for his funeral, I fled to the forest to knock down trees and rip my hands bloody.”
Vendurro clearly wasn’t accustomed to being in a position to soothe his captain at all, but he tried just the same. “You weren’t but a boy, Cap. And it was wrong, you having to prepare your father like that. Sorry if you feel the opposite, but got to say, that’s rough, even for a no-exception making kind of people. You weren’t nothing but a boy.”