Chapter 30: Strange Old Traditions

The Shinsok danced in two circles around their dead chief. The body at the focal point of the ceremony looked to be a man approaching old age, large of stature even laid on a stone bier. He was clothed in a simple robe, and only the face, hands, and feet could be seen. He bore no obvious wounds and looked peaceful.

The women made up the inner circle of the dance. They wore dresses made of leather, and their little girls stepped alongside them, hand in hand. The men of the outer circle wore pants of the same animal skins and harnesses across their bare chests from which swung tools of all sorts. Some men carried crude hammers, others short-handled digging instruments of bone and metal, and one had feathers hanging from his straps. The boy children had harnesses, too, but theirs were bare.

The adults sang in rhythm with the beating drum, eyes closed and faces to the sky, but many of the children stumbled with weariness. Members of both circles joined the dance and left it at irregular intervals, weaving their way between their neighbors to stand in the margins of the clearing where a variety of enticing foods were heaped upon tables of intricately carved hardwood. The Shinsok gathered around the tables chatted and laughed with a carefree ease than seemed entirely out of keeping with any death ritual Tarek had ever heard experienced. The Catori mourned their dead with a communal prayer to the Ones Beneath while prostrating themselves before the great ancestors’ tree, and any who failed to shed tears were judged unfeeling.

“Come have whatever you’d like,” Seppa said, pointing to the tables.

The feasting villagers saw Tarek and his friends coming, and the looks he saw seemed to be ones entirely of curiosity and friendliness. There wasn’t a weapon in sight.

It all made the new scar on Tarek’s back itch.

Neither Tavi nor Bachi seemed to share his apprehension. They both fell to eating with a will. A few of the younger Shinsok approached them, and both boys answered their greetings easily.

Tarek hung back and watched, looking from one face to the next in search of expressions that might hide malice. There were none. He darted glances into the shadows of the strongly-scented trees for warriors and hunters ready to spring. There were none. All he saw were families dancing by the light of the shining moon and taking their fill among friends. He searched for any movement, any whispers that might justify his suspicion. There were none. He blew out a breath and shook his head, wishing he could relax.

“Not hungry?” Seppa asked.

“I am,” Tarek admitted. “I’m just…”

“You’re the watcher,” she said.

“The what?”

“The one who takes care. Who keeps it together. Keeps them alive.” Seppa’s bird-bright eyes glinted in the moonlight, watching him.

“They’ve done their fair share of keeping me alive, too.”

“We don’t see many wanderers, but the few there are always cross our bridge soon or late. If there’s not one like you with them, I know they won’t be coming back the other way.”

Tarek shrugged, self-conscious. “I don’t know that I’ve done much as far as that goes.”

“Eat,” she urged. “I’ll have the first bite of whatever catches your eye, if it will set your mind at ease.”

Tarek hoped it wasn’t light enough for her to see the flush in his cheeks. She’s being nothing but kind. Stop being so suspicious.  “No need, thank you. I’ll get something.”

He went to the closest table as much to get out from under her piercing eyes as anything else. The woman seemed to be one part Yaretzi, one part Zuma, and one part Mahela: kind, strong, and canny. She might only be acting as chief due to her nephew’s death, but Tarek had no doubt she’d exerted a shaping influence on the tribe for decades. If the Shinsok tribe were truly as peaceful and happy as it seemed, then Seppa was likely a large part of the reason why.

The foods laid out on platters of hardened clay were unfamiliar. There were piles of some kind of armored, spiky green fruit as big as his fist, cuts of salted meat that were too dark to be capybara or fish and too fragrant to be fowl, and a huge carved bowl of brothy soup that seemed to have chunks of bread floating in it. A round, flat circle of whitish… something… as big across as his forearm appeared to be edible as well, given that a metal knife was sticking out of it and bits had been carved out already. He picked at the cut edge of the substance, finding it to be springy and firm under his fingers. A chunk the size of a large berry crumbled off in his hand, and he brought it to his nose. The white stuff was wonderfully aromatic, sharp and rich and musky all at once. His mouth watered, and he took a careful nibble. The flavor was incredible, and it felt smooth and delicate in his mouth. He quickly cut off a slice the size of his hand.

“Like the cheese, do you?” a man said, sauntering up with a young child sleeping on his shoulder. “Nice to see a man who appreciates good food.”

“It’s amazing,” Tarek replied around a second mouthful of the stuff.

“It turns out best in the caves down near the river,” the man said. “I make it myself.”

“If I could make food like this, I’d never do anything else.”

The man laughed heartily. “That’s what I like to hear. Have as much as you like, stranger, and be welcome.”

Tarek found small wooden bowls stacked by the soup and dipped one in, getting as many floating bits as he could. He sipped at the rim of his bowl. The broth was hearty and warm, full of salt and soaked bread that stayed chewy even though it was saturated. The cheese in his other hand made a perfect counterpoint, and he quickly filled his stomach with both. If it’s poisoned, at least I’ll die happy.

After three bowls of soup, five cuts of cheese, and two of the armored fruits, which were gooey and sweet inside, he’d exchanged words with a double handful of Shinsok and found every last one of them to be accommodating, pleasant, and not in the least bit disturbed to have strangers appear in the middle of the night at their death festival. He learned from a harried mother tending four squalling young ones that the dancing and singing was to wake up the ancestors to carry the dead on their way. It would end when the sun rose. When he mentioned the Ones Beneath the woman seemed to not understand what he was talking about. He wanted to ask her what she believed, but that seemed a heavier conversation than he thought he should strike up with a stranger.

An elderly fellow cornered him soon after and asked where he was from. When Tarek identified himself as Catori, the man beamed and asked if his people really lived naked in the jungle and ate nothing but raw meat. When he denied it, the man peered at him as if unsure of whether he was lying but didn’t press the matter. Instead he spoke of the dead chief and told Tarek a little bit about him. He had been well-loved, but he’d fallen ill recently, and as he recovered he set a foot wrong on the narrow paths of the Shinsok village and had fallen down the steep gorge to his death. It had taken a full day to recover his body downstream. Everyone was sad, of course, but he’d been fair and kept the peace for his people, so they celebrated in their traditional way.

By the time the sky was brightening in the east no less than a dozen of the Shinsok had cornered him to ask who he was and where he came from. A couple of the middle-aged women made oblique references to unmarried daughters, but it all seemed to be done in good humor.

He saw his companions weathering much the same treatment. Both of the younger boys appeared to be enjoying the attention immensely. Pahtl was somewhere nearby, Tarek knew. He’d felt the otter’s curiosity grow stronger as he peeked in from the fringes of the woods surrounding them, but the gathering of slick-skins was too large for him to feel comfortable revealing himself.

For Tarek’s part, now that his stomach was full and his guard was down, he could have fallen asleep where he stood. Many of the Shinsok looked just as weary as he, but they kept dancing. He wanted to ask if he, could lie down somewhere, but it seemed rude to leave the ceremony once welcomed in. As friendly as everyone was, no one invited the newcomers into the dance, and Tarek didn’t ask.

Tarek and Tavi stood side by side, the Shinsok having finally sated their curiosity about them, but Bachi was leaning against a tree nearby and talking animatedly to a young woman who seemed to be having trouble staying awake. At last, the interminable shuffle of dancing approached a climax, with all the adults abandoning their sleeping children off to the sides as they joined in the circles in one last push of song and dance. He didn’t recognize the language the Shinsok were singing. I’ll have to ask Bachi about it later.

Seppa appeared at his shoulder. “You may not want to watch this part,” she warned him. “Old traditions can be strange.”

The song crested and abruptly fell away to silence, and the Shinsok sank to the earth on their knees, heads pressed to the dirt as they faced the stone bier that held their dead chief. Seppa weaved her way through the genuflecting villagers and stood over the corpse, laying her hands on her dead nephew’s head as if she meant to bless him. As the sky grew brighter Tarek could see for the first time that the man’s face and hands bore many small scrapes and contusions.

“Topana, son of Nandi and Xeric, we who bore you through this life have shaken the earth all through the night to wake the deep places and lent you our voices to bring the stars close. The earth calls and the wind sings. Whatever binds you, we now loose. Whatever voice calls you, we have stilled. We take all that was ugly and small in your soul, anything evil or unclean, and draw it out.”

Seppa carefully parted the dead man’s robe to expose his chest, took up an obsidian blade that had lain hidden behind the body and quickly slashed through the skin. Tarek twitched, surprised by the intentional shedding of a dead man’s blood. He braced himself against the blood hunger, but his body stayed quiet. The blood of the dead did not move him.

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Tavi leaned close and spoke in his ear. “Xochil never said the chief had to be alive when we took his blood, did he?”

“No,” Tarek whispered. “We have to get to that body.”

An elderly man approached the stone bier holding up an intricately woven loaf of bread, which he laid in Seppa’s hands. She held the bread high, tore it in two, and put the smaller piece to the man’s chest. They must have done something to prepare the body, because despite the fact that he’d been dead for more than a day, the bread quickly reddened with his blood. “Leave behind the small, broken things of humanity and go where you will.” She tore the rest of the bread into bits and scattered the fragments to the sky. “Be free.”

The Shinsok raised themselves up into a kneeling position, holding their arms to the sky and clapping. “Be free! Be free!” they called. A few looked as if they had tears in their eyes, but the shouts were loud and joyous. Some of the children awoke at the noise and added their own clapping to the welter of sound. All around him, the villagers raised their voices and wished their friend, brother, and chief well as he went wherever the dead might go.

Tarek felt his eyes prickle. It was beautiful.

Then the moment was over, and the villagers clambered to their feet, chatting with one another about the coming day and the thousand tiny duties of life. A few of them went to the bier to lay a hand on the dead man or speak with Seppa, but mostly the throng was involved in gathering up sleeping children or packing away leftover food to take back to their houses. Several people gave the brothers a friendly nod, but no one bothered them. There was work to be done.

Within a fingerspan most of the villagers were filing out of the clearing, heading back toward their cliffside village. Seppa was talking with a gray-haired woman whose face was wet with tears, giving comfort and counsel as only a chief could do. Tarek yawned until his jaw cracked, but they couldn’t leave yet. There was a task to complete.

Bachi wandered over. “I think that girl liked me. She said her name was Sampa. Wasn’t she was beautiful?”

“She slept through half your conversation,” Tavi said.

“She was faking, I know it. Women don’t want to seem to eager. It’s not every day a girl meets a Singer, you know.”

“Leave her be,” Tarek said. “These people have been nothing but good to us. Let’s not pester their pretty girls.”

Seppa hugged the weeping woman, one of the last of the Shinsok in the clearing, and gently guided her in the direction of the cliffside village before coming over to the boys. “I hope that didn’t bother you too badly,” she said. “I know some of the other tribes have strange ideas about death and blood.”

Tarek eyed the bloody hunk of bread atop the dead man’s chest. “If we’re going to go as far as we think we might, different customs are something we’re going to have to get used to. Thank you for letting us be a part of this.”

“Why do you do that with the bread?” Tavi asked.

“Bread is what separates us from the animals,” Seppa said. “We soak up a little of the person’s life with it, drawing out all the bad, the evil, and the unclean things they ever thought or did. That way they can go wherever they will without being weighed down by the life they left behind.”

“And where do they go?” Tarek asked. Ever since he’d started to question whether the Ones Beneath truly existed, he’d found himself pondering the question again and again.

Seppa cast a hand from one direction of the compass to another. “To the wind or to the sky, to the earth or to the water. To be a fish or a stone or a star or a tree. Whatever they wish. Every person is different.”

Tarek nodded politely. It was a nice idea, but he wasn’t sure if he believed it.

“What about the body?” Bachi said, giving the dead man an uneasy glance.

“It will be burned. Our friend isn’t there anymore.” She spread a kindly smile among the trio of boys. “We should leave the body in peace for now. You’re welcome to come back to the village. We’ll be leaving for the Congress soon, but there’s no reason you couldn’t travel with us.”

Tarek blinked, wondering if he’d missed something in his exhaustion. “Congress?”

Seppa cocked her head. “I suppose you wouldn’t have heard about it in your wanderings. Runners from the Kuruk found us only a few days ago with the news. All of the tribes of the Lost are to gather at the Heart of the Song for the chiefs to confer. I begin to wonder if Topana died just so he wouldn’t have to listen to them jaw and complain. That’d be just like him.”

Tavi clutched at Tarek’s arm. “All of the tribes of the Lost? All twelve?”

She nodded. “I’ll have to sit with the others between the roots of the great tree and discuss what’s to be done about the worsening floods. As if we can do a thing about it, the dimwits. Still, it’s been a generation since the tribes last gathered. Young bucks like you shouldn’t miss it; more than one feud between tribes has ended because of marriages that grew out of a Congress gathering.” She winked. “A far better kind of congress than the one I’ll have to sit through.”

Bachi snickered at her double entendre, but Tarek’s mind was spinning with too many possibilities to appreciate it. If we went with them, everyone would think we belonged to the Shinsok. That might not be bad. But we’d travel much slower… and sneaking around the Kuruk village will be much harder if the whole tribe is watching out for us. “Your offer is kind, but I think we’ll keep traveling on our own,” Tarek said. “I can’t say how much it has meant to us to be so well treated, but… we like to go it alone.”

“Ah, to be young enough to do as you please,” Seppa chuckled. “Stay a few days and you might find yourselves thinking differently.”

Bachi looked tempted, but Tarek shook his head. “Truly, we have to go. Thank you for the food, and for the company.”

The old woman sighed. “If you change your minds, you can always come back.”

“Do you mind if we stay here for just a moment longer? We’d like to… pay our respects to your dead in our own way before we leave.”

Seppa frowned. “You shouldn’t tarry. The eater could arrive at any moment.”

“Uh…?” Bachi said, eyebrows raised. “The eater?”

“An outcast,” she said with a grimace. “The one who eats the dead man’s life. It’s a disgusting thing, but it must be done. We can’t just leave his sins sitting there on his chest to be burned.”

Tarek eyed the blood-soaked hunk of food. I have to get that bread. He hated to just snatch it and run, given how good Seppa had been to them, but he wasn’t about to let somebody else eat it. “We don’t fear such things. Please, if we could have just a few moments alone to pray… it would mean much to us.”

Seppa blew out a heavy breath and passed a hand over her eyes. “I’m too old to be staying up for the dawn anymore. Do as you will.” She shook a finger at them. “Don’t disturb the body.”

“We won’t. Our promise on it. Thank you.”

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