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fa’oatado-thoma.
Koth’po-shompo!
Koth’po-tyampo!
Koth’dardvaapo-kea-di—
Kea ‘dli-nerado po!
Keo’vha’attaye byefdo tro!”
     
(For what shall I have let you die
When life ran hot and full in you?
You had not fought your best battle
Nor loved your last lover.
You are not done with life.
I declare it! I demand it!
I announce this to you
So you may be sure of it!
Your spirit is still needed!)
     
    She sang the song through a second time and then a third, increasing pace of song and drumming. Between the hazy twin lights from the candles, a pale, glowing fog grew, drawing form from the smoke of the incense and the damp of the night. The fog descended, separated, shaped itself into little balls of woolly light, and settled into the skulls of Inndra Song, matriarch; of Troggar Raveneye, enemy; of Rasher the Hunter, comrade in battle; of Haron River, grandfather’s father; of the Mottemage Rakell Ingasdotte, friend. And the mist smoothed hazy impressions of flesh over the sculpted bones. Foggy eyelids opened, and beneath them, green lights brighter than the candles gleamed. Ghostly lips formed shapes, the very real bones of jaws creaked, hard-edged whispers scuttled forth like spiders from their drybone lairs. Medwind ceased her drumming and waited.
    From behind her, the cat Hrogner hissed and snarled, and when the ghost-figures remained, vacated the b’dabba. “Wakened…” the skulls whispered. “Wakened… alive…” The row of glowing green eyes fixed on her, and Medwind, who had first met some of these same vha’attaye as a small child brought before her mother’s altar to honor them, still felt ice down her spine. Her hair stood on her arms and the back of her neck, and her mouth went dry.
    Inndra Song asked, in a voice that was every night-creak, bone-scrape, gooseflesh sound in the dark, “What would you have of us, distant daughter’s daughter?”
    “I come to honor you, revered ancient mother’s mother,” Medwind said, pressing her forehead to the floor in ritual greeting.
    “We acknowledge that,” the bonevoice whispered. The rustles of other vha’attaye blended with Inndra Song’s words, a general agreement, temporary appeasement of the dangerous dead.
    “This is no honor,” whispered one skull. Medwind rose from her deep bow and stared along the line of bodiless heads that watched her unblinking from the altar. The bones beneath the ghostflesh gleamed along the line; ivory teeth, empty eyesockets, painted bones softened and obscured by the faint fur-sheen of light, but not gone. “I am dead,” the bonevoice of the Mottemage Rakell Ingasdotte whispered from her place in the far corner, “Let me die.”
    Tears damped Medwind’s cheeks, and she said, “I cannot. You are my best friend. I need you.”
    “If you are my friend, let me go,” the bones said, and the ghostlids shuttered down over the green-lit eyes, and the eyes guttered out and went dark.
    “Rakell!” Medwind cried, and clenched her fists so tightly her nails dug into the flesh of her palms. She hung her head.
    When Rakell was gone, Rasher the Hunter spoke. “That one is weak, Hoos-warrior. She fears the things that hunt between the worlds. She cowers in the cold darkness and does not bear the suffering of the vha’attaye bravely. She cries out—she begs for the light, and for life, and sometimes for release.”
    “She shames herself, and shames us,” Troggar Raveneye whispered. “Not even I begged for the soul-death, I who am your enemy, and not your people.”
    Inndra Song said, “You profane vha’atta. You give this gift to a coward, a weakling. We do not welcome her. We do not want her. Take her away.”
    The other bones rasped and whispered, and Haron River, grandfather’s father, said, “We have had enough of the cryings of the outlander vha’attaye. Girl, your heresies compound. You brought to the spirit realm a woman unworthy to join us—not brave, not willing, and not Hoos. This would be dishonor