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archiveofarethusaSix harvests Rue had seen, gold and green and plentiful, but this one was singular. This year the rites of supplication would be performed. The dead had to be placated, the adults all said, as if the macabre pumpkins, the milk saucers, the sisters of erudition, and the wayfaring prayers hadn't sufficed for a longer year than Rue knew the pains of. But she wanted to see, and see she did. After a fashion.
In the clearing of the redwood the rites were chanted, a third of their harvest heaped upon the odd altar that Rue had seen somewhere long ago, and for a moment Rue was offended at the sheer waste. But then came the knocking, at once from nowhere and all around, and from below the altar was a furor of sound that was sorrowful and sick and almost human.
"Our life to hold the dead!" cried Mrs. Hardin, and all around the living echoed her.
There was something awful in the redwood, sharper than its leaves and redder than its autumns. Something that was unamused by pumpkins and had no thirst for milk, that couldn't be explained by the wizened sisters. Rue supposed a few months of hunger was worth never having to know what it was.
In the clearing of the redwood the rites were chanted, a third of their harvest heaped upon the odd altar that Rue had seen somewhere long ago, and for a moment Rue was offended at the sheer waste. But then came the knocking, at once from nowhere and all around, and from below the altar was a furor of sound that was sorrowful and sick and almost human.
"Our life to hold the dead!" cried Mrs. Hardin, and all around the living echoed her.
There was something awful in the redwood, sharper than its leaves and redder than its autumns. Something that was unamused by pumpkins and had no thirst for milk, that couldn't be explained by the wizened sisters. Rue supposed a few months of hunger was worth never having to know what it was.