Voice of the Fire by Alan Moore (essential reading txt) 📕

She passes one to me that’s like a half-formed animal, so horrible it is squashed flat beneath a rock at birth. We do not speak, still thoughtful of the words that pass between us this last night. The dead girl’s smell is everywhere about my hair and clothing, and my appetite is poor. Each mouthful of the fish-meal cake takes me that long to chew it is not in me for to finish more than half of it.

Shifting my gaze from Hurna to the group before the hut. It seems the bully brothers are employed in rolling up the corpse within a drab, soil-coloured sail of cloth, the old man looking on as he rests there beside them on his bier. About to wind the shroud about her head, one of the rough-boys points towards the stripe of bright stump-water green that’s ringed below her open throat. He mutters something to his brother, then to the old man, who nods and makes reply, too far away for me to hear a word. The brothers shrug, and now continue in their dressing of the dead.

Beside me, Hurna gives a sudden snort as if to mark contempt. ‘He need not hope for me to drag him to his filthy rite. That’s up to you, girl. It may serve you well: you’re sure to pay more heed of how the dead are put to rest if you must make the long walk to their grave yourself.’

She laughs and makes her tits shake. Overhead a single crow looks down in passing and calls once, as if alerting us to the approach of something that may not be seen save from that soaring vantage. Clouds mass on the west horizon. In the willage, children chase a painted pig between the huts, now cheering, now complaining as the frightened creature veers this way and that, a gaudy smear of colour streaked amongst the barns and horse-yards, squeaking. What hope may there be for anything so shrill and bright? No hope. No hope at all.

There is a fearfulness that gathers weight and form within my belly day by day, grown restless and uneasy as a cold grey baby turning in my womb. You must be gone from here, part of me tells myself, before another dawn is come to find a dead girl placed before your door. Leave with the wolf light when there’s nothing save the birds awake; steal off between the snoring huts and never more return. It is not safe here. There are shadows that loom big behind each happenstance, each chance remark, and more is meant than what is said. Move on. Take up the track again and put these whispering huddles at your back.

And now another part of me replies: You cannot leave, it says, and throw away the only chance for ease and wealth that you may ever happen on, not when the stink of it’s so close. Think of the tunnels that may snake, gold flooded, here beneath you as you sit; the wells of treasure deep enough to draw from all your days. Are you a child, to start at dreams born of bad curds you eat before your bed? To mewl when there are creakings in the dark? These night fears must not cheat you of the old man’s leavings, that are yours by right. Stay. Stay and bide your time, and come at last to wear a coloured gown and dine on fat.

But what of her, the dead girl? If they find you out . . .

Don’t pay that any heed. There’s not a thing to forge a link in twixt of you and she. Why, even now the rough-boys, like as berries on a missel-sprig, prepare a bier on which she may be hauled to burial. She is not long above the ground, and when the soil is fallen on her face, then you may put her from your thoughts.

But if his dead eye truly looks upon a world we may not see . . .

All that is nothing save for mummery. Put it aside and think instead of Olun’s gold.

But . . .

Oh, be silent, both of you. There is a fishbone lodged between my teeth, and over by his hut the old man calls for me to drag him to the grave fields. Coming, father. Coming.

For a change, the journey is not far. We walk south from the settlement, with Bern and Buri carrying the cold and naked bride upon her hasty bed, while me and Olun scrape along behind. Above us, dead leaves rustle in great muttering crowds upon each yearning bough.

The grave site sets upon a weed-cleared rise that’s higher than the puddled boglands soaking all about. The women from the willage are already gathered there as we arrive. They glance up, silent, narrow-eyed, kneeling so to surround a place where all the turf is skinned away, the earthmeat there below scooped out and heaped up to one side as if with taint, a man-deep wound revealed. They crouch about the grave and braid a ring of flower-heads between their many hands.

The women part to let the shaven brothers and their lifeless burden move between them, making high steps, queer and delicate so as not to disturb the floral braid. Once by the graveside, Bern and Buri set the bier upon the grass, one of them clambering down into the pit to take the body from the other who now lifts it up, his fingers clenching in the curls beneath her arms. She’s lowered thus into the gravemouth, eyes still open, staring at us ‘til she sinks from sight in awkward jerks, each lurch and start accompanied by grunts from Bern and Buri. Settling her upon the gravebed now the bully boy climbs up to join his brother by its edge. Crows wheel above, charred flakes of noise that scatter and re-form against an empty sky.

The ceremony is a dull thing