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“Are you ready?” I whispered over Myrrah’s shoulder from behind her chair.
She swallowed once, just as the first sounds of low flutes and hard drums echoed through the meadow. Her hair had been cut short that morning, her peppered tresses braided into Hildegard’s grayed locks. Myrrah’s hand lifted to her ear, as if forgetting that there was no longer any hair to tuck behind it and nodded. “Take me to her.”
I gripped the leather handles of her chair and slowly walked us down the path marked on either side by Shades. They had been given clothes in every color, but today they wore the same black that was wrapped around Hildegard’s body. The same color they had worn beside her for every day of their lives.
We marched forward slowly. Myrrah did not speak or whimper but kept her eyes on the pile of wood in front of us. She locked her chair as we reached the edge of the pyre and turned to Elaran who was waiting for us with a sharp knife in her hands.
Today the traditions of the Elverin would be blended with the traditions of the Shades.
Myrrah took the blade by its wooden handle. Her jaw pulsed and her eyes searched the crowd for someone, softening for just a moment, before Gerarda opened her mouth and began to sing.
“Ish’kavra diiz’bithir ish’kavra.”From flame to ash to flame again. The words themselves were not sad, but in Gerarda’s low tone they were devastating. Despite her small stature, Gerarda sang with the presence of a seasoned warrior and entertainer all in one. Her voice was thick and rich like honey, but then would crack and sting like the venomous kiss of a bee.
Myrrah held up the knife as Gerarda’s song shifted to a gentle melody. She pulled the black cloak she rarely wore out from behind her back and sliced a large piece off from the bottom. Then she sliced open her hand and soaked the black fabric with her own amber blood. She looked up at me and I pushed her as close to the pyre aspossible for her to lay the piece of her cloak across it. She laid it to the left of Hildegard’s head, the same place Myrrah had rested her own every night she had shared with her wife.
The Shades moved as a group, pulling out their blades in one quick motion before slicing their own hoods from the backs of their necks. They laid their blood-stained garments across the pyre, one by one, not only to show their respect for the Halfling who had trained them, saved them, and died for them, but as a promise to never note their black hoods again.
Today marked the death of Hildegard and the death of the Shades.
I stepped back from Myrrah’s chair and unsheathed my bloodstone dagger. I sliced through the fastener at my neck and let the entire piece fall from my shoulders. I ran my blade over both palms before picking up the crumpled pile of black and staining it with my own blood. I carried the hood that Hildegard had crowned me with and the cloak she had wrapped around my shoulders only a few years later to her feet. I laid the entire cloak at the base of the pyre and looked over the wood to where Myrrah whispered her last words to her love.
When she was done, she nodded once.
“Ish’kavra diiz’bithir ish’kavra.” Gerarda’s song broke into a crashing crescendo as I raised my hands and felt the warmth of the flames flicker inside me and then deep inside the belly of the pyre. The first cracks of wood were haunting harmonies to Gerarda’s farewell ballad, the song ending just as the pyre fully ignited in shades of crimson and gold.
We watched the fire burn until the flames had all but gone. Even after most of the Elverin had left to attend to their tasks and the children had run to swim in the lake, the Shades stood guard as the greatest of us was turned to ash.
Riven kept his distance from me but his shadows swirled at my feet, curling around my ankles as I watched the embers fade from bright red to white. The Shades knelt on the ground in a final act of respect and dispersed hours after we’d taken our post.
Syrra and Gerarda stood on either edge of the ashes with white rakes made of birchwood and finished with gold tines. They pulled the ashes into a small pile in the middle of the burnt circle the fire had left behind.
Syrra knelt in front of Myrrah and presented her with a whitewood box. Myrrah opened it with trembling hands to reveal a velvet cushion that held a small pouch. It shimmered like glass imbued with flakes of gold, but its edges were flexible as Myrrah grasped it and opened its mouth by the golden string.
Syrra stepped behind her and moved Myrrah’s chair next to the pile of ash. The ground around the pile shook, breaking free from the earth and rising into the air just high enough for Myrrah to use the small gold spoon Gerarda handed her to fill the pouch.
I searched the clearing for Feron and saw him perched on an extended root next to the Myram tree, half concealed in its shadow. I smiled at him, grateful that he could use his powers to help Myrrah finish the ritual herself.
Riven appeared at my side and I reached for his hand, lacing our fingers together as I leaned on his shoulder. “That pouch will be used to plant Hildegard’s tree?”
Riven squeezed my hand gently and nodded. “Twelve moons from now, we will hold another ceremony to mark the new life that will grow from her death.”
“If there are any of us left to see the moons to come.”
Riven’s grip tightened, even his shadows curled more tightly around my legs. “That only gives us another reason to win.”
We watched in silence as Myrrah finished filling the last of the ashes into the bag. Syrra pulled her blade from one of the orbs of fire around the Myram tree and used it to sear the opening shut. Then she pulled the gold chain on the bottom free and placed it around Myrrah’s neck so she could protect it for the next year.
“What is that pouch called?” I asked Riven as the others helped Myrrah to her room.
Riven chuckled underneath his breath and looked down at where my head still laid against his shoulder. “It is one of the most sacred items of our people because it contains a person’s entire life, one’s entire being.”
I lifted my head. “So special it doesn’t have a name?”
His face cracked into one of those rare smiles, unburdened by pain or duty. The one he only ever wore for me. “It is called adiizra.”
My heart fluttered in my chest as the meaning of the word washed over me. It was the name Riven had been calling me for months, so casually I had thought it was a common name used between lovers here. But I could see in the intense way Riven’s eyes shifted that there was nothing causal or common in the way he meant it.
His hand found its way to my throat, tangling into the hair at the base of my neck. He bit his own lip as if restraining himself from doing anything unseemly at the edge of a funeral pyre. Instead his thumb brushed against my mouth, a promise of more to come.
