“It is the child Irseln’s body,” said Aruendiel, just as Nora recognized that the dark tangle of hair inside the pot was the top of a head.
“What do you mean?” Pelgo said. “She was just bones. They
“What was consumed has been restored,” Aruendiel said.
Gingerly, Pelgo prodded the head with a finger. “More of your magic,” he said grudgingly. “It’s a marvel, your lordship, but I can’t see the use of it. She’s still dead, isn’t she? And you’ll never get her out of that pot, not in one piece.” Nora had to agree: It was a large pot, but Irseln’s body was wedged into it as tightly as an orange into its peel.
Grasping the girl by the nape of the neck, Aruendiel somehow—Nora did not quite see how—pulled her free. The child’s body dangled from his hand. Massy gave a cry and jerked against the restraining hands of the guards. Aruendiel laid the small, naked corpse on the dirt floor. It was perfectly formed, pale as pearl, the face relaxed and empty. Irseln’s father inched forward, knelt, and took the body in his arms. “Irseln?” he said. She did not look as though she were either dead or asleep, Nora thought—more like an extraordinarily realistic doll.
“You see where her skull cracked,” said Aruendiel in a conversational tone. He indicated the wide, curving dent that began at the girl’s temple. Skin flowed smoothly over the break, as though the injury had healed years ago.
Irseln’s father touched the scar as though to wipe it away, then ran his hands over the child’s limbs. It was as though seeing his daughter’s body whole again, almost unblemished, made him realize for the first time that she was really dead. He looked up at his wife. “Massy?” he said, his voice raw and puzzled. “You did this? You killed her?”
Aruendiel cleared his throat. “Put her down,” he said. “There, by that stool.” He squatted to carve a circle in the dirt floor around Irseln with his pocketknife, then set the stool upright inside the circle, next to the body. The wooden stool shuddered, and then began to burn, although Aruendiel had not touched a flame to it. There was almost no smoke. The fire gnawed at the stool for a few minutes until nothing was left except a fine gray powdering of ash.
It was hard to say what was different about Irseln’s body. A faint flush in the white skin, perhaps. A subtle tension or readiness in the small limbs, as though they were once again bound to a governing will.
“Ah,” Aruendiel said, exhaling satisfaction. He lifted Irseln’s wrist, feeling for a pulse. “Her heart begins to beat. She is nearly ready.”
“She is not breathing,” Rorpin said after a minute.
Aruendiel reached inside his left sleeve and withdrew a long gray feather. He inserted the plumed end into one of the child’s nostrils and twisted it briskly.
Irseln sneezed.
It seemed to Nora that almost everyone in the room sucked in their breath at the same moment—Irseln included. Her body pinkened as her chest rose and fell, again and again and again, stronger each time.
“Irseln? Irseln?” After a second’s hesitation, her father picked her up again. She opened her eyes and looked blankly at him, then at the other adults. “Irseln, little one, are you all right?”
A look of wondering surprise crossed Irseln’s face. “Pa?” she said. Then the child’s eyes fell upon Massy.
Massy smiled nervously. “Irseln, chick—”
Irseln screamed, her small face contorting. “Ma killed me! She threw me down, she hurt my head!”
“Hush, hush,” Massy said, her smile fixed. “You’re all right now, sweet, everything’s fine. You were asleep, you see, and now—”
“No, not asleep, I died! My head hurt, I was scared!” Irseln clung to her father’s neck, glaring at Massy. “I hate you!” Her wails gained strength. There was nothing wrong with her breathing now.
“What happened, Irseln? Tell me,” Rorpin said, with a glance at his wife.
“She hurt my head,” Irseln said, putting a hand on her temple. “I laid down. Then I couldn’t get up. I tried to say help me, but she didn’t hear me. No one heard me.”
“Then what happened, sweet?” her father asked.
For a moment Irseln screwed up her face in concentration; then she closed her eyes and shook her head, looking frightened. “She killed me!” she said with an air of explaining the obvious. “I hate her! I hate her!”
That was all they could get out of her, no matter how her father pressed her to tell what she had experienced after she lay down and died. “It’s useless to ask her,” Aruendiel said at last. “She remembers nothing more—they never do.” He was standing a little apart, his arms folded. “Now,” he added, “we have other business. Let us go outside.”
“Yes,” said the headman, with a slight look of confusion, glancing at the child in Rorpin’s arms. “It’s time for the sentencing.”
As the assemblage regrouped under the decrepit apple tree, Nora was conscious of a low rumble of dissatisfaction in the crowd. Rorpin was holding Irseln, now dressed and calmer, by the hand. People stared at her and muttered. Nora assumed at first that they were questioning the justice of sentencing a murderer when the murderer’s victim was now alive and well and trying to pat a friendly dog—the same dog, Nora noticed, who had been chewing one of Irseln’s leg bones the day before. Listening more closely, however, Nora discovered that the villagers were more concerned that Irseln’s resurrection meant that there would be no hanging.
The headman recited the charges in round, official tones. Whatever doubts he might have about the propriety of condemning Massy now, he showed no signs of them. Massy had not only committed murder and cannibalism and lied about it, but she was also guilty of wifely disobedience and an offense called child theft, depriving her husband of the fruit of his loins. They had thrown the book at her.
Massy herself seemed to pay little attention. With a peevish expression, she turned her head slightly from side to side, her eyes flicking indifferently over the faces of the spectators.
“Massy Rorpinan, you have been shown culpable of these crimes by your own confession and by signs and proofs indisputable and clear to the minds of men,” Aruendiel said rapidly, as though running through a formula that he had recited many times before. “You have violated most grievously the laws established and upheld by your liege lord and by His Majesty the Most Glorious Abele the Fourth. It is the will of these princes that lawbreakers suffer commensurate punishment so that injustices are avenged and the peace of the land is restored. Before I pronounce sentence upon you, Massy Rorpinan, what do you have to say on your own behalf?”
“Why I should be punished, I don’t see,” she said bitterly. “I don’t know what it was you done to her, but she’s fine now.”
“True,” said Aruendiel with what Nora thought might have been a trace of amusement. “But she was dead—not to mention cooked and eaten—by your hand, and the law is strict about such matters. Do you have anything else to say for yourself?”
There was an agitation in the crowd, the sound of running feet, high-pitched cries. Massy turned her head, eyes alight.
The boy Horl erupted from the crowd, ducking away from a man who tried to hold him back, and threw his arms around his mother. An instant later, his sister Sova followed, bawling.
A red-faced woman, tendrils of hair plastered damply to her neck and forehead, pushed through the crowd. “I had them shut up,” she said to Pelgo, panting a little, “but they slipped out when I was seeing to the goat. They been like wildcats ever since they heard what’s happening to their ma.”
“Pig’s blood, get them out of here, will you? They’ll have another chance to see Massy before—that is, later.”
The children were less than comforted. Sova’s sobbing redoubled. Massy tried to embrace them as much as her ropes allowed. Then suddenly, with a fierce movement of her hand, she shushed the children and raised wet, angry eyes to Aruendiel. “You asked me what I have to say for myself, your lordship? These kids are what I have to say for myself.
“I didn’t mean to push Irseln that hard. Then before I knew it, she was dead. She’s a handful—you saw what she’s like—but I never meant to kill her, I swear.
“What I did next—well, your lordship, I looked at her lying there, and it just came to me. Do you know what it’s like to hear your children crying because they don’t have enough to eat? Night after night? I do. At least my kids got one good meal. They didn’t know where it came from. They were just glad to have their bellies full, for
