Chapter 289

The Burn's black slope under a red-gold sky. The line of the bereaved winding down the branch. And at its head, Aska, sitting on a charred stump, ash sifting off her. Both crews behind her, watching, unsure what to do with their hands.

a farmer's wife, middle-aged, hands rough, holding out a small clay jar with both hands like an offering. Inside, grey ash and a few charred threads of red.

taking the jar gently, tipping a pinch of the ash into her cracked palm.

the ash on it, and her cracks blazing white-orange, the ember-knot at her sternum flaring. The ash rising, swirling, taking a shape.

numbered in the corners as Aska counts: 9… 17… 26…

The mother opening her mouth to say "I'm so sorry I didn't—", and stopping. Remembering the rule. Swallowing it.

Saying instead: "I'm so proud of you. I never said."

The girl laughing, embarrassed. "Mamma!"

The two of them holding each other.

counting, her own cracks widening a hair with every number, a small flinch each time.

at 58, looking at her own hands, which are starting to glow at the fingertips.

at 60, burning: gently, gold, from the fingertips in, and gone into ash that settles back into the jar. And Aska flinching as she goes, as if the fire went through her too.

her face grey, a new crack running down her cheek. Handing the jar back.

beside her, watching her face.

Minute after minute. A burned fisherman relit for his sons. A burned house standing for sixty beats while an old couple walk through it. A burned love-letter reading itself aloud to the woman who was meant to get it. Aska greyer with every one. She doesn't say no once.

standing in front of her when the line pauses, hat in his hands, for once fully awake. A small cloth bundle in his fist.

unwrapped: a handful of grey ash, coarse and glittering faintly white, like salt.

looking at the ash, and not even reaching for it. Very quietly.

nodding slowly. Not surprised. Folding the cloth back over the ash.

reaching out and taking his hand in hers, her cracked charcoal hand round his big grey one. It burns him: the smell, the steam off his skin. He doesn't pull away.

next, standing in front of Aska with her one arm, holding out the stump of the other.

(Kali, for once, says nothing. Smurjan puts a hand on her shoulder.)

a little way off, arms folded, not in the line.

at the edge of it all, watching the line. Bror on his hip, its birch grip under his hand, the engraving of two boys and a dog worn smooth by his thumb.

patting Bror once, gently, like a little brother's head.

looking at the gun. At the boy-voice in it. And for the first time all day, the corner of her cracked mouth going up.

padding up and flopping down on her warm footprints at the foot of the stump with a deep, happy groan.

The line no shorter. Aska still on her stump, grey, cracked, counting. The crews sitting round her on the black branch, not leaving. Roffe, frowning, looking down the line.

beside him.

overhearing, without looking up.

his hand in his coat, closing on something: the charred spar from the Current, the scrap of black sailcloth still nailed to it. Not taking it out. Not yet.

Halfway down the branch, in the queue, standing a little apart from the rest as if things moved round him without meaning to: a tired man. Forty-five, and forty-five for a very long time. A patched leather coat burned in a hundred places. And round his neck, three times, a scarf of a hundred armies, regimental colours knotted end to end, armies that no longer exist.

a jar: big, heavy, old brown clay, sealed with wax, and heavier than ash should be.

turning, seeing him, going very still.

in the pilgrims' line, a mouth that seems about to say "well", looking up the branch at the crews, at Aska, at the jar under his arm.