95. Now Sister
NOW: SISTER
Dermid wept openly for hours, inconsolable. He had lifted Evangeline from the wagon and cradled her facing away from us, his back against a tree.
Our camp was silent and perfunctory. My right hand was swollen from Starling’s stamping, but none of the bones were broken from what I could tell, and I was able to bandage the cuts Reed and Ilsit had sustained. Tessa and Jade passed around cheese and bread, though no one wanted to eat.
“We have to keep going,” Jade said when Keir waved her away. “You yourself said we won’t be out of harm’s way until we reach Eccleston.”
He turned to her, and his face seemed to split in two.
I looked away from his taking her into his arms, his seeking comfort in her.
Reed was sitting on the ground, forearms balanced on his knees, head hung. I went to him and sat near him, my hand on his back. I did not know if I was allowed more, but I could not refrain from offering some kind of succor.
“Say something,” he whispered.
I was at a loss. All I could think to say was, “You will see her in every tall, curly-haired person you see for the rest of your life. And it will gut you. And you will see tall, curly-haired people who live past the age she was. And you will think, ‘Why them?’ And none of it will ever make sense. But there will be a day—not now, not soon, but one day—where you will see someone that looks like Evangeline and you will rejoice that you had any time at all with her in this life.”
He nodded but did not lift his head. “Keep talking,” he rasped out.
I told him all that I knew of death, that I was long acquainted with it, having lost Magda at a young age and been more freshly reintroduced to it when I had lost Avery, Rowena, and my parents. Whenever I concluded one story of sorrow, he asked that I keep going. So I did.
Later, there was an argument among the men.
Dermid wanted to bury Evangeline, to cover her with rocks.
It was a practice of the Helmsmen as they lived in the mountains.
But Reed and Keir said that air Tintarians’ bodies were disposed of by their closest relative’s choice.
Folks who had earth magic or who worshipped Mother Earth left their dead in Nyossa, those aligned with Sister Sea put them in the ocean, and those with Father Fire burned them.
Reed then said we should burn her body as we were nowhere near Nyossa or the sea, and Keir agreed.
I let them debate, let them dwell on something other than sorrow, and then I suggested that we burn her—but that I would offer up some blood so that her pyre would be lit by Father Fire, so that she would be made ash.
Dermid—having heard my brief account of Magda and understanding that once that heat was ignited, there would be no body left—agreed to this.
“She’ll be carried away on the wind, by her god,” I added.
We lined her body with rocks so as not to cause a wildfire. Tessa offered to strike the flint on steel and place the kindling on Evangeline. Then she stood and said to the three men, “Pay your respects. We’ll step back and grant you the time with her. When you’re ready, then ask for Robbie.”