6
We came around a thick stand of hazel, coppiced long ago, now forgotten, growing wild.
“Here it is.” She nodded ahead.
A great old oak stood on the far side of a ragged meadow, thick with harrow and wild carrot. With the tree’s low, spreading branches and high, gnarled roots it looked almost squat, but as I squinted up through the leaves, its twisted trunk reached up past its neighbors and into the sun above the canopy.
“It’s been my favorite tree all my life. We’ve come the long way round, but my parents’ house is just a few minutes’ walk that way.” She pointed toward where I knew the northern edge of the village must be. “Most of my early walks into the wood started by coming to this tree. Now Sarah and I bring our boys here.”
We walked up between two of the huge roots, and I laid my hands on the rough bark.
She leaned against the great bole, and smiled. “I imagine I’ll be buried here some day.”
The fresh-turned earth was marked by a broad pale stone, round from the river, not yet carved. The grass before the grave had been flattened in a little patch. But no one was here now.
I hadn’t been allowed at the funeral. No one but her nearest family had. The soldiers had forbidden it.
The air was hot, and still. The buzz of insects was heavy in the wood.
Some people were bringing goods to the storehouses, or money right to the town hall, early, before the tribute was due, double-checking that their name was put down correct in the account, anxiously counting on their knuckles as they walked home.
My parents were laying aside as much as they could, frowning as they looked at the thin scrim of coins at the bottom of the little strongbox.
Some people did nothing, because they had nothing to spare.
I sat on a stool in front of the woodcutter’s hut, whittling, while he sat on the step, running a stone over his axe. He didn’t know the forest as finely, or as broadly, as Ellia had, but on his narrow, snaking trails he had gone as far into it toward the valley head, eastward, where no road ran, as she had done. As far as anyone.
“I could hang some extra mushrooms to dry. It would take a lot of hunting to find as many as I’d need, though.” He closed one eye, and squinted down the blade. “Time I couldn’t get anything else done.
“I don’t guess it matters much. What are they going to do to me, after all? I—” He stopped. “Mm.”
In the village, the soldier who had killed Ellia walked on patrol like nothing had happened. I thought his eyes would move more quickly among us than the others’ did, or that he might turn, nervous, at approaching footsteps. But he seemed quite calm. And any time he came near me, my mouth went cold, and my hands shook, and I had to duck away, and run, and find somewhere to sit alone until it passed.
On the riverbank, I watched a pair of cranes wade in the shallows. The deep green feathers around their eyes shimmered against the black. One cocked its head, looking up to the sky.
High above, a thin strand waved and flickered against the blue. I could just make out the flock’s soft calls.
Both birds stretched out their wings, and with long, loping steps, took to the air and beat hard to climb and join their kin, heading for the next valley south, and the next, and the next. Summer would be over soon.
I went to where they’d taken off. Mud swirled in the water where the ripples still lapped against the bank.
In the shadow of the trees, a clump of mushrooms. I plucked it with both hands, and brushed off the dirt, and tucked it under my arm, and headed back toward the village.
I hadn’t seen the shrines so full of dolls since the bad winter before Marden was born. Almost every broad bowl of stone now had at least one stub of a stick, dressed in a scrap of cloth and marked with some important detail. Some I recognized; most were simple enough that I could only guess.
Coming around on the path that marked the edge of the forest, not far south of our house, I stopped to look at three little dolls, each one wrapped in strips cut from an old shirt gone threadbare, and all three tied to each other with a cord. The bark had been cut away with smooth strokes from a steady knife. Tufts of string for hair were stuck on top with pine resin—light brown on the smallest, then yellow, then dark brown. I wondered who they might be.
Then I realized: Mother and Father made these.
I’d seen them make a doll once before. Adler had been so sick that most people thought she would die.
I made my way around the eastern edge of the village, to the woodcutter’s hut, and left the mushrooms on the step. On the way home I snapped two short lengths, just longer than my grip, from a fallen branch, and picked the bark away by hand as I walked. I took what was left of my old scarf from beneath my bed, and tore it in two, and wrapped each half around one of the sticks. I daubed one with a bit of paint for Father’s beard, and stuck thread onto each, like they had done. I twisted Mother’s hair into a knot like she wore, and left Father’s down. I went back to the shrine.
Maybe all five will be too heavy.
I tied Mother and Father’s dolls to each other with a length of yarn and tucked them in close to Adler, Marden, and me.
That evening, the dolls were still there. But by morning, the birds had taken them. I hoped the forest would listen.
I came around the hazel copse again, and crossed the little meadow, where light fell steep through the branches of the great tree. Someone had laid flowers on the grave—bluestar, that grew only sparsely at this end of the valley. Their petals were beginning to droop as the day grew hot.
I sat down by the blank stone. Early leaves had fallen on it; I brushed them away.
The rough call of a bird rang through the clearing.
The insects still hummed in the trees.
Behind me, quiet steps. Wiping my eyes, I jumped to my feet.
“Falke.” Sarah’s voice was quiet. She seemed to only half-notice me. “I’ve come to carve her stone.” In her hand were a small hammer and chisel.
I made to leave, but she shook her head slightly.
“You can stay for a little longer.” Her voice was almost normal. Terribly tired, but that wasn’t what was off. It was like her usual voice had become just a cloak, and beneath it, she spoke in a whisper.
She sat down heavily before the grave, and set the tools beside her. She looked at the flowers that had been left, and for a moment she seemed to drift away.
“Do you—is there anything you want me to put on the stone?” She asked me. “Her folks have told me what they’d like, and our boys too, and I—I think I know what I’ll say.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “But she’d smile to have something from you there, too.”
I slowly sat down again, thinking. That Ellia was kind, and wise, and clever, and a strong worker, and that she looked out for others—all that would have already been said.
“She—she was a good teacher.”
Sarah nodded. She looked away. “That’s true. When she first brought me to the valley, she—” she stopped, and ran a hand over her face. She rubbed her eyes. “Yes. A good teacher. I’ll say that.”
Sarah looked again at the stone, and at the bare earth. “Alright, Falke. If you could leave me.”
I got hurriedly to my feet. “I—goodbye.”
She nodded.
I left by the forest trail. I looked back only once. Sarah sat cross-legged, the stone held in her lap.
The ringing of her hammer filled the glade, and followed me into the trees.