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But that evening they returned ho the day, a child had died By the stoic look on the faces of the dead child’s relative, they’d known it was cohly-woven blanket, then handed the li split in half and gouged out to make a coffin After the mother placed a few trinkets, beads, feathers, and a carved wooden spoon beside its tattooed wrist, other adults sealed the lid Together, they chanted a singsong verse that sounded like prayer

A strange half-hued froleanize Adica, dressed in the gar when he had first arrived

She blessed the coffin with a sprinkling of scented water and a coestures and chants Four e as Adica sealed their path, behind thee walked in silent procession to the graveyard, a rugged field roith nettles and hops Male relatives laid the coffin in a hole The mother cut off her braid and threw it on top of the coffin, then scratched her cheeks until blood ran The wailing of the other women had a kind of ritual sound to it, expected, practiced; the hed She looked drained and yet, in a way, relieved

Maybe the child had been sick a long ti the children who ran and played and did chores in the village all day

The grave was filled in and the steady work of piling and shaping a mound over the dead child coe, which lay out of sight beyond a bend in the river Alain ree flopped down, resigned to a long wait

Twilight lay heavily over theot darker earlier every night as the sun swept away from midsummer and toward its uessed it was late summer or early autu sod in a wheelbarrow shaped all of wood, axle, wheel, supports, and plank base He pitched in to help the the heavens or praying in supplication In her hallowing garb she see as wondrous, a spirit risen out of the earth to bring help, or harm, to her petitioners

Dusk blurred the landscape to gray Other ht torches and set them up on stout poles so the work could continue, as it did steadily as night fell and the moon rose, full and splendid Adica shone under its rays, a woht at anyaway four-footed into the dark forest and run him a ht pricked holes in the blindness that protects hosts and the fey spirits, half-seen apparitions clustering around the living people who sought to inter the dead Was that the child’s soul, cla for itsthat it had been betrayed into death?

Yet the spirits could not touch the living, because Adica in her garb of power had thrown up a net, as fine as spider’s silk, to keep theh touched with dew fallen froh that net Inside its invisible protection, the raveyard, but trusting They understood her power, and no doubt they feared her for it

Sorrohined

That fast, the vision faded, but her lips continued to an to sink Very late the , lonesoht The father wiped his eyes They gathered their tools and headed back toward the village, not without apprehensive looks behind the Adica paced an oval around the tiny olden antlers cut the heavens as she strode Now and again she tapped her spiraling bronze waistband with her copper bracelets The sound sang into the night like the flight of angels

Yet what could Adica know of angels? None here wore the Circle of Unity He had seen their altars and offerings, re him of customs done aith by the fraters and deacons but which certain stubborn souls still clung to Her rituals did not seeht to believe they were

She fell silent as she came to a halt on the west side of the fresh htfully scarred cheek, the woman whom he had heard in a dream ask the centaur shaman if Alain was to be her husband She had spoken the words with such an honest heart, with such si