Baby-season slows and my pack is lighter. The mothers and their newborns have exhausted most of my herbs and simples. I like the new life coming into the world bringing a wriggling, slippery hope. Yet there comes a time, when my work is done, that I long to turn my back on the crowded little town, its noises and squabbles and pervading smell.
I have a rare treat, a companion for a few days, perhaps more. It is pleasant to have a man of few words by my side, resting in quiet companionship, walking the land together. We leave the smoky houses, turn our faces and our hearts to the clean air of the hills - and the forest.
Adunzil and I walk slowly through the slumbering land of the long-dead, deserted by the living. A high land often scoured by a mournful wind and odd mists. The stones weather imperceptably, lines smoothing, new cracks forming. Even the marker-stones give in to the wearying work of time. The plants here are deceptive, too many are deadly simulcrums of benevolent blooms. They send their long roots into the barrows, touching the thoughts of their inhabitants... and the bitterness or anger or bewildered loneliness seeps back and gathers into the leaves.
I pick and taste, consider and reject several leaves before setting the task aside. I will return, perhaps with my cousin, to see if there are any rare sweet herbs that brave the barrows. We will weave some old tales for the dead, give them a little peace as they slumber.
For I do not fear the dead. I have seen that transition of living to dying too many times, held the non-living, not -quite -dead again and again in my warm hands. Too young, too soon, too beautiful, too needed... surrounded by anguish. And the old and forgotton, unloved, uncared for whose death is so quiet and private there is only me as the silent witness to a whole life ending.
How many men in this age understand that life and death are gifts in equal measure? Precious few. I see the struggle in thier eyes as they try to grasp life as hard as they can, wanting to live forever - the long folly of our race. I see the hands of the recent dead uncurl like spring leaves as life transforms to death, letting go. Open hands receive so many things that a tight curled fist cannot. True life comes to those who open their hands and let life run through them. Life does not belong to us, we belong to life. Life is king.
