The Woman Who Buried Nations by CT MacNamara

Author:CT MacNamara [MacNamara, CT]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-05-18T22:00:00+00:00

Later that week, while Lord Dober was still performing his homecoming dance, I came upon an old woman as I was picking mushrooms in the surrounding woods. From behind all I could see was a mess of bedraggled gray hair. I felt instant fear, in a manner I had not known since I encountered the banchecki. I smelled something ancient yet familiar, and my first instinct was to flee. I was still not prepared for whatever came next. Perhaps then I wished to live forever.

“Child,” said the voice from over a worm-licked log. “There is no need to have fear in your heart.” She did not turn around, not yet. “Well of course there is,” she continued, “but not of this simple old beggar woman.”

“Reveal yourself,” I said. “Please, or I will run.”

“Oh, Loreena dear,” said the voice, “Haven’t you learned that running from a monster only makes it give chase?” She whirled around and before me stooped Dramadi Moore, the herb witch. She looked ever more haggard and ancient—and remember, I had never known her in her youth. Time’s funny, is it not? Even then in the woods that day she was probably a decade or so younger than I am now. Time is a wonderful assassin that way; you never see its act, and yet its results can never be denied.

Anyway, of course I felt a susurrus of emotions as I stood in those lonely woods, staring into a mirror that reflected only the past.

“Dramadi, grandmother,” I said, trying my best to appear calm and respectful. I even approached her first, I drew close enough to breathe in the musky scent of her. She smelled of death forestalled. Of mud and faded parchment. But as I approached, she smiled and placed her withered hand upon my forehead.

“I’ve always known you were out there, somewhere,” she said. “My little survivor.” She smiled proudly.

“Is that what you’re doing out here all alone?” I asked. “Searching for me?”

“No, child,” she said. “I wish I were on so noble a journey. I’m just wondering the countryside, because I have nowhere left to go, and nothing much to do. I suppose I have…outlived my usefulness.”

“How are they?” I asked.

“Who?” she asked in an incredulous tone.

“My mother and father,” I said. “And Boyd, and —”

“Hush, child,” she said. “You must forget those names.”

At first I didn’t understand. But of course, it was the Kimall custom to not speak of the dead. I recalled our ritual of benediction on the year’s anniversary of a lost companion, and vowing to never again speak their name. It was considered a form of honor, of respect. One simply did not speak the names of the dead. And thus from Dramadi the herb witch, I learned that I truly was an orphan in the world.

“There’s nobody left,” she whispered. “Not a one.” She smiled and patted me on the shoulder. “Well, aside from you, and me, and your friend, Lord Dober.”

“His parents…?”

“I said they were gone, save the three I named.

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