From the change in angle of the light slanting through the windows, she’d slept at least two marks, maybe more. Funny how it felt like moments. She took another sip of tea and choked some words past the lump in her throat. “Are they done?”
“Soon. That’s why I got you up.”
“Hmmmph.” Dionne handed her the empty tea cup and walked over to the wounded. They still slept, a typical outcome of healing. They all breathed normally, and Dionne adjusted a pillow here and a blanket or coat there before she went to the privy to clean up and wash her face. The cold water did only a little to help her feel refreshed. Surely it was just because she’d spent so much energy healing, but Melony’s death weighed on her mood like a stone, so heavy it was impossible to drag up a welcoming smile as a woman bundled in a warm coat and handmade sheeps-wool scarf came in the door. “Is the Healer here? Dionne?”
“I’m here.”
“Ylia.” The way the woman said her name had a bit of singsong in it. “We’d like you to come out, to say something before we bury them all.”
Dionne shouldered into her coat, sure she didn’t want to go stand graveside and say nice pretty things. She was too tired.
She and Rhiannon followed Ylia to the four graves. Either Rhiannon had told them about her relationship with Melony or someone had remembered, since although the other three were finished, they’d saved the work of throwing the first earth onto Melony’s body for Dionne. The simple gesture made the last few steps to the graves even harder to take.
She stood in front of Melony’s coffin. The lid was still open, the familiar, beloved face marred by a cut cheek and a bruised lip. With her life gone, her mentor appeared simply slight and thin, wispy. Dionne felt thinner herself, as if some of her soul followed Melony, as if her past had begun to die.
Lioran and Rhiannon stood behind her, close enough for Dionne to hear their breathing. The same man who had taken their reins this morning—Jared—climbed down into the grave and closed the lid of the coffin, hiding Melony from the world.
The faces standing graveside were lined with spider webs of dignity and pain, some of the men with settling jowls or bald heads, most of the women shaped more like boxes than urns, slow and broad, a few thin and reedy, all bone and skin. As a group, the primary expressions they wore were resignation and hope. Dionne tried to look hopeful, to be the Healer she was, but all she could manage was a lighter despair than she’d started with. The afternoon was like molasses, time moving slow and everything exaggerated.
She knelt down and took a fistful of rich, damp earth. A week of relentless rains had stopped a few days ago. Even though the surface of the earth had dried in the previous day’s wind, the bottom of the grave was damp, dark mud.
As soon as she stood, she started talking, not saying anything at all like what she usually said at graves. Not comforting. “Life is not fair. It unfairly plucked this wonderful woman too early, and for doing what she always did. Helping people. I came here to get help from her; she has helped me all my life when I needed it. Oh, I haven’t seen her for years, but that’s partly because she helped me grow up.”
Rhiannon came and stood beside Dionne, like a pillar. It gave Dionne the strength to continue. “This year I needed her, and she’s not here.” A tear fell down her face. She let it go. “Healers cry. That’s something Melony taught me. If we don’t cry, we die inside, a little bit every day. So when we need to, we cry.”
And then she was sobbing, great piles of breath backing up in her throat and bursting out, her nose and eyes running like streams. She threw the dirt before she couldn’t see any more; then she knelt down by the grave, Rhiannon next to her.
Head bowed, she heard other fistfuls of dirt thudding into the hole. Murmured prayers accompanied each throw. One and another and another.
“Thank you.”
“Speed on your journey.”
“I’ll always remember the blackberry jam.”
“Goodbye, and who am I going to weave with now? I’ll miss you so.”
“Pass well.”
In time, the wet sloppy sounds stopped.
Rhiannon elbowed her gently.
Dionne looked up in time to see Lioran throw his own fistful of mud. A tear streaked down his cheek as well, and then another, the most genuine emotion Dionne had ever seen on his face. He was doing the one thing she hadn’t seen him do since she met him. Crying.
She started to push herself up, but Rhiannon held her down. “Finish your own grief.”
But her grief had lightened a little. She glanced back at the coffin, smeared and splattered with mud and prayers. “Thank you,” she whispered. “You did find a way to help.”
Almost everyone went back to their violated houses, and even Rhiannon followed, murmuring something about making more hot tea. Dionne stayed graveside, standing in the chilling breeze while leaves blew around her feet. Lioran came to stand beside her. His eyes were red and sore, his cheeks puffy and pink, his hands covered in mud, his Whites dirty beyond saving. He put an arm around her and pulled her close to him, the two of them standing in silence for a long time. She felt warmer with him there. Finally he whispered, “You’ll remember her. I remember my mom every day. I remember the way she bit her tongue when she cut potatoes for dinner and how her voice lilted when she called Jackie, our farm dog. I remember my little sister calling me a wimp and a bookworm and then asking for help with numbers.” His voice had lost the whine. “I remember my dad the day I was Chosen, looking like the best and worst thing ever had all happened to him at once and wishing me well.” He swallowed. “That’s where I go at night, to remember them. I’m so afraid that I’ll go back to town and get busy and forget the little things, and then they’ll really be dead.”
Dionne looked down at the fresh earth. “She’s dead. I will forget the details, because I’m not dead, and I have a job to do. But that doesn’t change the beauty of her life or make what she gave me any less.”
“I have work, too.”
“Yes.” More silence, and then Dionne whispered, “Thank you for telling me about them.”
“Thank you for singing to me,” he said. “I’ll tell Rhiannon that, too.”
Two days later, they started their return journey to Haven. There, they’d tell their tales and see if there was a way to get help for Shelter’s End, maybe some guards or a few young families. They’d encourage the Crown to send out a hunting party to find the bandits and clean up after them. Ylia and Jared accompanied them to be witnesses, riding horses borrowed from a farm in a nearby town. Haven was stretched—it was always stretched— and Dionne expected that only a little could be offered. But they’d give whatever was possible.
Dionne cracked her sore knuckles and told her back there were a few more years of riding left. Shelter’s End was worth keeping, maybe a place they’d go themselves, although not for a while.
On the first night away from town, Lioran picked a campsite without being asked. He did go off with Mila, bare-backed and silent, but on his return he didn’t roll away from them all and stare out into the night.
He sat beside them at the fire, Ylia and Jared on one side, Lioran between Rhiannon and Dionne on the far side. When Rhiannon started to sing, he joined in. Dionne had never heard his voice. It was rich and full, and confident.
Midwinter Gifts
Stephanie Shaver works in the online gaming industry, where she has donned the hat of writer, game designer, programmer, level designer, and webmaster at various points in her career. Like most people who work by day and write by whenever, her free time is notoriously elusive. She can be found online at
and other virtual hives of scum and villainy. Offline, she is either hiking with the smirking entity she calls “The Guy” or on the couch with cats and a laptop stacked atop her, recovering from the aforementioned hiking trail.
“This is madness,” Lelia said.
“This?” Her twin, Lyle, looked over his shoulder at the Haven marketplace, packed with people engaged in the mindless, happy activities that swirled about at this time of year. “It’s just the Midwinter Market.”
She punched his shoulder, a futile gesture as they were both bundled up against the cold; she in mittens and
