Page 60 of Circle of Days
“Thank you.”
Katch and Duff helped to collect dry logs and the job was soon done.
Yana, Pia, and Katch went back to the house and picked up Alno’s corpse. Walking side by side, holding the body in their arms, they carried him to the pyre. Pia scattered wildflowers on him.
It was midday. People began to arrive: Alno’s kin and Yana’s, Pia’s friend Mo, and a surprising number of others, all women.
Yana nodded to Katch, who lit a torch.
Yana stood up and spoke to her dead man. “We should have had many more years. We should have grown old and grey with one another for company. If you had died in old age, I could have said I was lucky, to have had you for so long. But now I have to go on without you.” Her voice broke down, and she said in a whisper: “Without you.”
She took the torch from Katch and held it to the pyre. The dry wood caught quickly and blazed up. Someone began the funeral song, and everyone joined in. Then they all sat quietly around the pyre, remembering the kind man with the ready smile, as the body slowly burned to ash and fragments of bone.
Katch opened a small basket and produced cakes she had made with grain and milk, and they ate.
When at last the fire went out, Katch, who had thought of everything, produced a wooden shovel and handed it to Yana. The mourners began the song of the dead, asking the spirit of the river to welcome the ashes of their loved one. Yana picked up some of the remains and scattered them in the river. She handed the shovel to Pia, who did the same, hardly able to see through her tears. One by one, each of the crowd performed the ritual, until a light breeze blew the remaining ashes away, and the song came to an end.
The sun began to set. In the sad half-light of dusk the mourners separated, moving away, each with their own thoughts about life and death, and returned to their homes for the little death that is sleep.
Next day, Pia and Yana returned to watering. Pia thought about the cremation while she did the tedious work. She had been surprised at how many people had shown up. She had not known that her father was so well-liked. But perhaps they had come for her mother’s sake. Yana was popular among farmer women for the way she stood up to Troon.
At midmorning Pia noticed two men apparently surveying their fields. She screwed up her eyes against the sun and said: “The shorter one is Troon.”
Yana nodded. “And the tall one is Stam.”
Pia was surprised. “How he’s sprouted!” She had not seen him for a while. “He’s only seen thirteen midsummers.”
“Boys do that at a certain age. It doesn’t make them men.”
“I wonder what they want.”
“Oh, I know,” said Yana.
“What?”
“You’ll see.”
The two women put down their pots and walked across the fields to where the visitors stood in the shade of an elm tree. Although Troon was short he was wiry, and looked menacingly strong. Stam was taller by a head and neck. He had only one ear, the other apparently having been violently cut off, leaving a hole surrounded by the lumpy remains. People said Troon had cut off his son’s ear as a punishment for some misbehavior, but Pia did not know whether that was true, and could hardly believe it, even of Troon.
Troon said: “My deepest sympathy to you both.”
Stam added mechanically: “And mine.”
Yana said briskly: “My man died after breathing smoke from the fire on the Break—a fire caused by your foolish feud with the herders. If you want to make amends, stop fighting the herders.”
“Never mind about that. I’ve come to tell you that you must find another man immediately.”
Among the farmer folk a woman could not own property, so Yana could not inherit Alno’s farm. It was a widow’s duty to find another man to run the farm with her. Pia’s mind had been so possessed by grief that she had not thought of this.
Now she recalled that if a widow failed to find a man within a year, the Big Man would choose one for her.
Yana said: “I’m aware of that, Troon, and I thank you for the reminder. However, according to custom I have a year to look for the right man.”
“Normally, yes.”
Yana stiffened. “What do you mean,normally?”
“There’s a drought. We’re starving. We can’t allow a good farm such as this, right near the water, to be run by a woman and a child when we so badly need its crops.”
