Chapter 5 #2
His voice broke on the last word. I looked away because grief deserved privacy even when there was nowhere private left to have it.
When the final offering had been placed, Elder Rina returned to the center of the grove.
Yarrow was passed through the crowd until everyone held a sprig. Mine shook between my fingers.
“Names are the last home we give the dead. Speak them.”
We did. Thirty-two names. Thirty-two times the village became smaller.
Some were spoken strongly. Others barely made it through tears.
A boy no older than ten screamed his mother’s name so loudly birds fled the branches above us.
Rina’s voice faltered when we reached her husband.
Tomas could not say Irelia’s the first time, so I said it loudly enough for both of us.
“Irelia Venn.”
The name hurt more than seeing her body had. Then Maia. My throat closed. Everyone else spoke. I didn’t. For one terrible second, I couldn’t. The yarrow stem bent between my fingers.
“Maia Alerain.”
My voice cracked so badly her surname almost disappeared.
Mine. The name she had given me because whoever left me at the edge of the forest had given me only Lyra.
I stared at the woman beneath the white cloth and wondered whether she had chosen Alerain that first night.
Whether she had looked down at the strange infant someone had abandoned beneath a sky drowning in stars and decided I needed more than one name.
Lyra Alerain. Hers because she had made me hers.
Always mine. My chest tightened so violently I nearly lost the next name.
When all thirty-two had been spoken, we dropped the yarrow into the graves.
Then came the earth. There was no magic in that part.
No prayer that made it gentler. Spades entered soil.
Dirt struck cloth. Someone sobbed when the first handful landed over a child.
Tomas stood beside Irelia’s grave until her face disappeared and then turned away so sharply I thought he might be sick.
I stayed. I watched dirt cover Maia. I watched it cover Irelia.
I watched until there was nothing left of either of them except freshly turned earth beneath an elm tree.
By noon, Edenlo had buried its dead. By evening, it had begun deciding who to blame.
The first time I heard my name, I was scraping blood from the stones outside the meeting hall. I had been working for hours. My knees ached against the ground and the skin over my knuckles had split in three places, but every time someone told me to rest, I found another thing that needed doing.
Ash had packed itself into the cracks between stones.
Broken glass covered half the eastern road.
The remains of festival tables had to be dragged away before someone stepped on the nails jutting from them.
The fountain was filled with black water and pieces of burned ribbon.
There was always more to do. I needed there to always be more.
Stillness meant Maia’s chest not rising.
Stillness meant Irelia beneath dirt. Stillness meant remembering the thing beyond the ridge. So I worked.
The voices came from behind the remains of the cloth merchant’s stall.
“They weren’t here for us.”
My hand stopped.
“Keep your voice down.”
“Why? Everyone saw it.”
I recognized both voices. One belonged to Merra, who had brought Maia eggs every third morning because her hens laid more than she could eat. The other belonged to a man whose shoulder I had held together with my own hands while Maia stitched him after a hunting accident two winters ago.
“They went toward her. Every one of them.”
“That doesn’t mean—”
“You saw what happened.”
I pressed the brush harder against the stone.
“She lit up the entire square.”
“And saved your son.”
Silence. I waited for that to matter.
“Then why did they come?”
My fingers tightened around the brush. I scraped until the bristles bent. Someone approached behind me and the conversation stopped immediately. I didn’t turn around. I knew what I would find if I did. People looking away. That had become Edenlo’s favorite thing to do.
At first I told myself it was grief. Everyone had lost someone.
Everyone was exhausted. No one knew how to speak anymore because every conversation eventually stumbled into the name of someone who should still be alive.
Then Fenric stopped beside the fountain with a basket of what remained of Nara’s sweet loaves.
He gave one to Tomas. Another to Elder Rina.
When he reached me, his hand hesitated. Barely.
But I saw it. Fenric had kissed me behind the granary once when we were sixteen because Irelia had dared him to.
He had spent the following week refusing to look me in the eye.
We had laughed about it for years afterward.
Now he looked at my hands. The same hands that had filled with silver-blue light. I stood slowly.
“Fenric.”
“Lyra.”
He held out the bread. I took it. His fingers did not touch mine.
“Thank you.”
He nodded and moved on. I stared at the bread until I could no longer see it clearly. Then I put it on the stone beside me and went back to work.
By the second day, people stopped pretending.
I was carrying broken boards toward the salvage pile when two women moved their children off the road before I passed.
A man who had known me since birth made a protection sign against his chest. Someone had scratched a star into the soot outside Maia’s cottage and crossed it through with three violent lines.
I scrubbed that one away myself. Tomas saw me doing it.
He stood at the end of the path with a shovel over one shoulder, watching until the last line disappeared beneath dirty water.
“Who did that?”
“I don’t know.”
His jaw tightened. I rinsed the cloth in the bucket. The water turned black around my fingers.
“Lyra.”
“I said I don’t know.”
“That isn’t what I was going to ask.”
I wrung out the cloth and pressed it against the wall again.
“Then don’t.”
He went silent. I hated myself for the relief.
Tomas had lost Irelia too. I knew that. I knew grief had hollowed him out just as thoroughly as it had me.
But every time I looked at him, I saw her fox disappearing beneath dirt.
Every time he looked at me, I wondered whether some part of him believed the whispers.
That I had brought the wraiths. That I had brought death.
That Edenlo had needed saving because of me in the first place.
He left without asking whatever he had meant to ask.
I scrubbed until the skin over my palm opened again.
On the third morning, the accusations finally found a voice.
We were clearing the square. Most of the western road had been opened again.
The dead were buried. The wounded who would live had been moved from the meeting hall into homes that still had roofs.
There were too few houses for too many people, so families had doubled and tripled together.
Maia’s cottage remained mostly intact, but no one had asked to stay there.
I pretended not to notice that either. A group of us were dismantling what remained of the festival platform when one of the beams shifted.
I caught it before it crushed Tomas’s hand.
He pulled back. Not from the beam. From me.
I released it. The wood hit the ground between us.
“I wasn’t going to hurt you.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
His face tightened. “Lyra.”
There it was again. My name spoken like an apology for what he was about to say. “What?”
He glanced around us. People had stopped working. Not all of them. Enough. I straightened slowly. “What?”
“People are scared.”
“Of what?”
He didn’t answer. I laughed once, but there was nothing amused in it. “Say it.”
“Not here.”
“Why? They’re all listening anyway.”
Several people looked away. Tomas rubbed one hand over his face. There was still soot beneath his nails. “Nobody understands what happened.”
“Neither do I.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Then why have you barely looked at me since we buried her?” Pain crossed his face. I regretted the words before they finished leaving my mouth. But I didn’t take them back. “I watched her die.”
“So did I.”
“I know.”
“No, Tomas. You watched them carry her body into the hall. I watched that thing standing over her. I watched it reach for her. I watched her still moving and thought I had gotten there in time.” His throat worked. “I thought I saved her.”
“I know.”
“Stop saying that.”
His eyes flashed.
“What do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know. Anything that sounds like you’re still talking to me instead of whatever everyone has decided I am.”
“I haven’t decided anything.”
“Then look at me.”
He did. For a second, he was Tomas again.
The boy who had grown up three cottages from mine.
The boy who once broke his wrist jumping from the mill roof because Irelia told him he was too afraid to do it.
The boy who had danced badly and laughed loudly and loved my best friend without ever finding the courage to tell her properly.
Then his gaze dropped to my hands. Whatever had been holding me together finally gave.
“They came for you.” The voice came from behind him. The square went silent. I turned. Merra stood beside the fountain. There was no fear on her face now. Only grief sharpened until it needed somewhere to go.
“What?”
“The creatures. They came for you.”
Tomas stepped between us. “Merra.”
“Don’t.”
“She lost people too.”
“We all lost people.”
Her eyes never left mine. “My sister is under that tree.”
“I know.”
“My nephew is under that tree.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” The question struck harder than it should have. I stared at her. Merra took a step closer. “Because you’re still here.” The square changed. Not visibly. No one moved. But I felt the shift in the silence around me.