The old woman grimaced, and gestured him away from the grave, the sad little hole where Molder lay curled on her side, nested on nothing but the old piece of hide she had liked to sit on while she worked, the wound in her head against the damp soil. Carver moved stiffly, still angry and worried. Finally the old woman stopped, crouching under a bush, and gestured for him to sit down. He lowered himself slowly to the ground.
“I am an Ash,” the old woman began. Carver shivered; her voice had the tone and cadence of the nightfire chants. “Ash are the godtalkers, and the gods gift Ash with vision of times to come. Days and days, and seasons of days, winters and springs more than anyone’s life, and the latepeople, the witches, will be born.”
“There are witches now,” said Carver, very politely. “Are the latepeople born to the witch clans?”
“We have no witches now!” the old woman said angrily. “No witches!” Carver sat stunned. All his life he had heard of witches. His father’s older brother had been killed by a witch, tranced into sleep in a storm, and frozen: that was true. His father had demanded a callsong, and a visitor from another camp had come, answering that call, and been speared by all the men, and hung from a tree. A witch, his father had told him, and yanked him back from touching any of that dangerous blood. The other tribe had never complained, which meant they had known they harbored a witch—but killing a witch in the tribe was harder than letting another do it.
“My father’s brother—” he began, but the old woman stabbed a finger at him, and he clamped his mouth shut.
“No witches like the latepeople will be,” she said. “Now we have one or another who makes a bargain with the wrong gods. One person may be killed, perhaps two or three. But it is all water running downhill, as water should do. Your father’s brother—I know about that. He boasted to that witch about his skill in foreseeing storms, and more shame to him that was no Ash, but a Mink. What does a Mink know about storms? So that one gave him drink sweetened with wild honey, and he drank more than he should; and slept on a night when the moon was ringed by cloud, and snow came. Is that witchery? No, you could do that, if you wished.”
Carver could not imagine it, giving death in the drink of welcome.
“He didn’t mean to kill your father’s brother. He thought to have him boast more, and then waken to snow in the camp, safe but shamed. But your father’s brother quarreled with another, and walked out into the darkness, and no one would follow. There he died, when the snow came. The witch came to your father’s callsong, yes, but he already knew he must die.”
“But he was a witch—”
“No. Not like the latepeople. Listen, Carver, and I will tell you. But this is a secret, and you must not tell others.” He touched his hand to his own clan emblem, and she went on.
“It was in my mother’s day that we first noticed it. Like your people, we made comfortable graves for our dead then: nests of soft grass or fur, and grave-gifts to comfort them in the shadow lands. Even the winter graves had flowers, for we dried the yellow lilies of the swamps, and saved them, so that all the dead would have color and light in the darkness. And we did something else, which no other people I know of tried to do. When we could, we buried our dead with their kin: bloodclan with bloodclan, in joined graves, then linked head to foot, so that the Eldest could be honored by their descendants.
“My mother told me that she was just swelling with her first child when the people returned to their summerlands one year and found all the graves open. Freshly open.”
Carver stiffened, and the old woman nodded.
“Yes, it was shocking. At first they thought a plague of bears or wolves had torn the graves open, or the earth itself had split, but the best hunters looked carefully and said no. There were prints enough in the ground: some of people with strange clothing on their feet, some of animals with no feet at all, a pattern like this—” And the old woman scooped the reindeer pendant from Carver’s hand, and pressed the chain into the ground, then again beside the first print, leaving an odd pattern that looked like nothing he had seen.
“People had robbed the graves,” the old woman went on. “They had taken the bones of the dead, and all the grave-gifts in the most recent graves, those of the year before.” She paused a long time. Carver sat thinking about it, what they must have thought, coming on those graves all open to the sky, as Molder’s was now. He would have been terrified of the spirits, sure that the air was full of death pollen. But these people had the Ash Clan with them, the godtalkers, so they may have felt less fear.
“My mother told me that everyone went a day’s journey away to camp, walking all night. They were frightened of the dead, and of the people who had taken them. But a man of Ash, and three hunters, went back very early the next day. And what do you think they found?”
“The latepeople?”
“No. Worse. The next day, they found the graves still open, but open for a long time. Deserted, empty, weathered: the hollows nearly filled in the older graves, grass and moss growing all over.” She peered at Carver’s face, intent on something he could not imagine. “You don’t understand?”
“No.” Open graves weathering overnight? It had to be witchcraft, but nothing he had ever imagined. Why would a witch do that?
“It had been years—years since the graves opened. Years in a night. The man of Ash then burned sweet woods, and spoke in a way we know of, we of Ash, and the gods answered. By their wisdom, he could see that it was the latepeople. Far in the future, in their own time, they found one grave. In it was that which made them search for another. And by witchcraft then they walked back in time, just as a man might walk upstream to find the place where berries grow, if he sees one float by in the water. And they found our gravesite, and robbed it, and then came back earlier, and robbed it again, in what was to our people a day and a night, at most.”
“Did anyone ever see them?”
The old woman looked away. “Some have said so. Some say they take the children who disappear—that it is not our witches, but those latepeople witches. I have not seen them myself. But I know what they look for, and where. If our dead are to have any comfort, and be safely housed until the gods turn the world over, we must leave them nothing to interest the latepeople. I have seen graves opened, and left alone, when no treasure was in them. Now. Give me that pendant.”
So compelling was her voice that Carver had opened his hand again before he thought. The old woman took the pendant and chain, and led him to a small tree growing nearby.
“The young trees are best, Carver. Old trees may die, or blow down. Choose always one too large for the reindeer or other horned ones to break when they clean their antlers, but one small enough to live long.” With her best blade, the old woman slit the bark, lifted a section, slipping the blade underneath as a skilled hunter skinned game, and pressed the pendant and chain under it. “We never place more than one gift in a tree. Some things can be buried under a live root, where the root will grow over it. The dead are not like us; they can reach their gifts even through the wood of trees, or the roots. As long as we give them clues.” Now she twisted off a twig of that tree, and took it to the grave, where she dropped it carelessly onto Molder’s folded body. Carelessly? Carver looked up as another twig fell along Molder’s cheek, and saw the old woman nod toward another tree. One by one the family came, each dropping a twig—in one case a pebble—beside the dead woman. And then they closed the grave, piling stones more carelessly than Carver’s people—or more carefully, he finally thought, watching the caution with which they chose stones and placed them.