Rare and Beautiful

Galoring Cemetery
68 Autumn 205

Sav first remembered learning about the concept of death as a child during the Autumn’s Turn Festival.

Not the fun part - the part with the good food and the masks and everyone making lots of clamor and laughter. The part on the day when everyone went to the cemeteries to visit the stones and the mounds where the ashes of the dead were buried. She clutched her mother’s hand and remembered looking around at some of the other people in the cemetery. Most weren’t smiling. One man was wailing, rocking back and forth on his heels, far away in front of a stone. He was the only one there, unlike the mound that she and her mother were at, which had many.

When she asked, her mother, honest as ever, said it was because he or his family had money to spare to put his ancestors’ ashes on their own. Her own parents hadn’t had that money, so they were put into one big hole with everyone else who died that year. “It’s no a bad hing, though,” Lusira had said, smiling down at Sophronia. “It’s like the Harvest reminds us - we’re aw part of a community that binds us together, e’en after we die. It’s just made more obvious when the parts of our bodies mingle wi’ everyone else, too.”

Then it had been their turn in the line to step up to the marker on the mass grave for the year 197, and lay their torchbrush flowers down, and say a few words to the spirits of her mother’s parents (her grandparents, she supposed, though the term felt strange—she’d never had a physical person to apply that name to). “So e’en when they’re deid they’re still there, i’ th’ hole, but aw in pieces and mixt-up wi’ aw else?” Sophronia had asked as they walked away, their stomach feeling funny at the thought.

Her mother put her hand to her mouth, and Sophronia thought she might be trying not to laugh, but she wasn’t sure why. “Nay, nay, wee Nia, they’re not there. It’s on’y the physical parts o’ them, but their spirits have gaun. The deathknots aid in keepin their spirits intact an’ rememberin who they are until the bodies can be burnt to release them, but once they’re free they hie themselves elsewhere. That’s why we light the candles to bring them back home during the Autumn’s Turn Festival. We on’y visit their physical parts tae honor their mem’ry, an’ to gie us a place tae remember them best.”

“Where do they go?” was the natural next question.

“Nobody knows, not for certain. The spirits that come back t’ visit are forbidden to say, e’en could we communicate in words wi’ them.” Lusira smiled, her wide mouth turning the expression into something dazzling, and caressed Nia’s head. “That’s why it’s important tae appreciate bein’ here an noo, because we don’t know what’s tae come next. If we’re on’y here walkin’ this land for a fourscore o years, an’ may be spirits whose nature is beyond our ken for the rest of eternity, why then—bein’ alive is a rare, beautiful state o’ bein, an’ should be appreciated as such.” She inhaled deeply, and smiled even more broadly. “Imagine not bein’ in a place tae smell fresh-baked buns! D’ye want one?” Without waiting for an answer, she turned and flagged down the baker with the tray of honey-drizzled buns, buying two, and Sophronia instantly forgot the questions she had raised.

At least for the moment. But she would remember it later, particularly after her mother, too, was gone.

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Rare and Beautiful