“Aelia, we were wondering when you might be ready to start the ceremony.”
Aelia tilted her head up, squinting. It was one of the council members’ sons, his eldest, though he was only just old enough to shave. If she had any room left for any other emotion, she might have felt surprised to see the fading light of dusk settling over the forest above her.
“Yes, sorry,” she mumbled, wondering how she was going to get out of the pit she’d dug herself in. How had she gone so deep without realising? “I’m ready.”
“Hand me the end of your shovel,” the boy said, offering his hand.
He hauled her out of the grave, Aelia reverse abseiling her way up the dirt walls.
Mortified, she noticed most of the village was in attendance, everyone waiting for her. How long had they all been there?
Turning a brighter shade of red, she scooped her tools out of the way and moved to stand in her place by Otis’s grave.
Fifty-three graves had been dug in the coppiced clearing, in no particular order, merely where the family of the deceased found room between the severed trunks for a new sapling to be planted. The families stood by their graves, the rest of the village standing at a respectful distance.
Only then did Aelia notice the stretchers that had been carried from the village, each one with a figure perfectly wrapped in a white shroud. She didn’t even know which one was Otis.
The village had no priestess, they were too small to warrant a temple, but one of the councilwomen stepped forward to perform the rites.
The words were lost on Aelia. She’d heard them countless times before, yet they gave her no comfort. The councilwoman spoke of how they were returning to the soil, to nourish the land they had sought nourishment from, to become one with the forest they had called home. All such lovely sentiments, all such bullshit.
Otis was gone, his life taken by a monster. There was no meaning to his death beyond that, and no pious sermons about Mother Nature’s circle of life would make her think any differently.
Dusk was a vibrant time in the forest, and nature didn’t pause for burials. Aelia drowned out the monotonous voice of the councilwoman, tuned out the chorus of sobs and sniffs from the grieving loved ones, instead closing her eyes to focus on thelife surrounding her. The shriek of an owl, the curdling call of a vixen, the fluttering of a bat’s wings.
They gave her peace that she could never have found from the words of the ceremony. Her life had changed beyond recognition, leaving her alone and bereft, but the forest hadn’t changed. It would never change.
All too soon it came to the time to bury Otis. They lowered him into the grave, and everyone grabbed a shovel. The peace Aelia had found was short-lived, caving in on itself as she had to accept help turning the soil back over onto Otis.
It was tradition, she couldn’t stop it, but she wanted to whack her shovel over the heads of the artemians who stepped forward to help her. Otis was her family, not by blood, but in every way that mattered; it should be her burying him, and her alone.
They planted a sapling over his grave, marking it with a placard with his name on, and Aelia felt something inside of her rip open all over again at the sight of it. His name shouldn’t be on a placard, he shouldn’t be buried beneath his tree, not yet. It all felt so wrong, like a nightmare she’d wake up from, cold and sweating.
Yet here it was. In undeniable letters.
Otis was dead. Mirra was dead. And Fenrir had been taken.
The villagers started ambling back to Callodosis, arms slung over shoulders and handkerchiefs clasped to faces. Aelia stepped onto the broken earth and pressed her forehead to the sapling, letting the tears come, feeling them drop from her chin and onto the soil at her feet.
“Goodbye,” she whispered, eyes closed as she pictured her guardian. Mirra didn’t have a grave, the Astraea had stolen her right to become one with the forest when they’d burned her body, but Aelia knew Otis wouldn’t mind sharing his space with her memory. So, Aelia pictured them both, mourned them both, said goodbye to them both.
Aelia didn’t return to Callodosis with the rest of the village for the wake, there was no one there she could grieve with. Instead, she stumbled home, unsure what hurt more, her body or her heart.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The climb up the stairs nearly killed her, but finally she staggered through the door. Suddenly, the thought of a house on the forest floor didn’t seem so awful.
After another, longer shower, she limped into the kitchen and froze.
There, on the counter, was Otis’s dagger, spotless and shining in the light from the lamp she carried, next to a tub and a note.
It was the first time she’d thought about the man all day.
Grumbling, but too curious not to look, she crossed the kitchen and put the lamp down to pick up the note. In perfect, swirling handwriting were instructions on how often to apply the salve she assumed was in the tub.
The petulant part of her wanted to rip it up and hurl it out of the window, with the salve following closely after it, but logic kicked in. Medicine was expensive, and she needed to heal if she was going to go back to work. And she absolutely needed to go back to work if she was going to afford to keep this place from crumbling into disrepair all on her own.
With an angry sigh, she twisted the lid of the tub free, revealing a pink cream she didn’t recognise. Not that she’d hadthe luxury of affording medicine very often before, most of the time she’d had to rely on her own knowledge of the herbs they could find in the forest to treat the occasional ailments she and Otis had suffered with.
