Cenric considered telling her about Morgi’s feelings on polygyny but didn’t think that would help right now. That wasn’t what Brynn needed to hear. “I’ll show you. Walk with me?”
“It’s dark,” Brynn protested.
“The moon is bright.” Cenric glanced overhead. “Your goddess Eponine will light the way.” He glanced to the dogs. “Snapper can lead us.” He stood, reaching down to her.
Brynn hesitated but took his hand. “Where are we going?” she asked, scooping up the puppy in her other arm.
“I’ll show you.” Cenric tugged her away from the longhouse, up the path leading to the hills beyond.
Brynn walked beside him, silent with her head bent partly down.
Snapper, to the cairns.
Cairns!Snapper trotted ahead, leading the way.
A chill breeze whipped up, rippling the grass and lashing at their mantles. Brynn wore a thick wool mantle, the puppy tucked under it.
Cenric took her up the narrow curving path, under the pine trees. Brynn looked up through the pine branches, their skeletal fingers splayed overhead like spiderwebs.
“Not far,” Cenric assured her, though she hadn’t spoken.
Snapper bounded ahead of them, sniffing along the trail, then racing back and looping around them again. Several of the other dogs followed in a loose formation, escorting them through the shadows.
They cleared the line of trees, coming to a series of sloping mounds set atop the hill. Some were ancient, sinking down into the earth. Others rose new, their rocks not yet overtaken by moss and grass.
Cenric had once tried counting them, but it was hard to know which slopes were natural and which might be old barrows, worn down by the passage of time. Either way, there were a hundred or more of them in varying sizes curving along the hillside.
Brynn gave a little shudder as she realized what these things were. “Graves?”
“My family,” Cenric confirmed. He looked around them at the expanse of barrows. “Over two hundred years of them, if the stories are true.”
Brynn was rigid at his side.
“This is…” Cenric tried to explain it. “The land. It belongs to me, but I belong to it.”
Brynn shook her head, just the barest motion. She didn’t understand.
Cenric hadn’t had to explain this to someone before. Aunt Aegifu, despite being the single most annoying person he knew, did understand, but she might be the only one. He tugged Brynn after him, past the newer cairns that rose around them like dark beasts.
Brynn looked to the right and left as if she was frightened. That was the last thing he wanted.
Cenric led her to a felled log near the center of the massive graveyard. He sat down, guiding her to sit beside him.
Brynn sat, if a little stiffly. She let go of his hand to readjust the puppy in her lap, bundling the edges of her mantle around the small dog.
Cenric exhaled sharply. “This…” He gestured around them. “It’s…” He frowned at the dark shapes rising from the soil.
“The dead?” Brynn asked, her voice small.
“No. Yes, but that’s not all.” Cenric chewed his lip. “This place is filled with people who I never met, some whose names I don’t know, but they are still a part of us.” Cenric singled out a large mound not far from where they sat. “The children from the village play on that mound in the summer. The sides are covered in grass, so they like to roll down it.”
Brynn still didn’t speak, listening patiently.
“They climb that one over there.” Cenric gestured to a newer mound, one taller with steeper sides. “When Valdari attacked the village in my grandfather’s time, he and his men trickedthe raiders here so the women could pelt them with stones from above.” Cenric almost went into gorier detail but noticed that Brynn had gone rigid. He went back to something lighter. “Come spring equinox, we’ll hide baubles amongst the cairns for the little ones to find. There is dancing, singing, and we light a bonfire up on this hill.”
“That sounds lovely.” Brynn sounded wistful. “But I still don’t understand.”
Cenric gestured to the silent watchers around them, his dozens of ancestors lying beneath the rocks. “All these men and women are gone, but they aren’t. They are still a part of our lives, and they still mean something to us.”
