When she’d finished, Pitch straightened and stretched his aching back muscles. The pain in his shoulder wound had grown fiery.
Roe eased his shirt down to study his bandage. “Oh, Pitch, it’s bleeding. Let’s stop for a while.”
“No.” Pitch gestured to Matron Weedis’s headless body a few hands away. “I want to finish the Healer’s purification first. Then I’ll rest. I promise.”
Pitch rose and led the way to Matron Weedis. As he crouched by her side, Dogrib stepped forward, moving around in front of them as if to form their personal barricade. His long white hair glistened in the afternoon light. No matter how many times Pitch looked at Dogrib, he felt awe at the man’s snowy white hair and pink skin.
Roe tenderly touched Matron Weedis’s withered arm. “She was a great woman. A fine Healer. I’ll miss her.”
Pitch removed a small paint bowl from his waist pack. “If you will paint rain on her legs, I’ll paint stars on her arms.”
Roe dipped her forefinger into the bowl and carefully painted wavy red lines down Matron Weedis’s skinny legs.
“Take your time,” Pitch said. “We want Gutginsa, who guards the entry to the House of Air, to know that she is truly one of the North Wind People, a relative of the Star People.”
Roe’s brows lowered. “What do you think would happen if we sent her soul to the Underwater House where the Raven People go? Would her ghost come back to harm us?”
Pitch tilted his head uncertainly. If the Council ever discovered that he’d Sung one of the North Wind People to the Underwater House, they would leave no stone unturned until they found Pitch and killed his entire family. Sending a dead person’s soul to the wrong afterworld ensured it would be shunned and abused for eternity.
Pitch said, “I don’t think we have the right to decide, Roe. All of her life, she has expected to go live in the House of Air with her relatives. We should respect her wishes.”
Roe petted Matron Weedis’s arm. “Yes, you’re right. It’s just that I would like to spend time with her in the afterlife. I’m sorry we will be in different houses.”
“That’s the way it has always been. They have their places, and we have ours.”
Pitch finished the stars on the matron’s arms and awkwardly removed a coil of twine and six feathers from his pack. “Here are the feathers.”
Roe reached over and pulled his obsidian knife from his belt. She cut the twine into several lengths and replaced the knife in its sheath.
As she tied a feather to Weedis’s thumb, Pitch said, “These feathers will give her the ability to fly through the three Above Worlds, and finally to the House of Air.”
Dogrib glanced over his shoulder and said, “I don’t know why anyone would wish to turn into a star. Spending eternity in darkness sounds depressing to me.”
Pitch smiled as Roe tied feathers around the matron’s ankles and wrists and then slipped a length of twine beneath her back and tied the last feather over her heart.”
Pitch said, “When Sister Moon rises between the stone bodies of the war gods tonight, these seed feathers will sprout, and in a blink her whole body will be covered with feathers. She will have soft gray wings, just like Mourning Dove who gave the feathers, and she will soar away to the first Above World.”
When they’d finished, Pitch touched Roe. “We must now care for our own souls. Follow me. Do as I do.”
They pulled their clothing off and stood naked in the cold. Roe looked beautiful, perfect. In comparison, Pitch looked as skinny as a drowned pack rat, with trickles of watery blood running down his thin arm from the bandage.
Pitch led her to the fire, where a large basket of shredded cedar bark sat. He sprinkled a fistful over the fire and as the purifying smoke rose, said, “Make sure you scoop the smoke over every part of you, to wash away any evil Spirits who have been attracted by the smell of death.”
As the fragrant smoke bathed him, Pitch felt better. He reached for a clean knee-length shirt and dress that lay folded on the ground. He handed Roe the beautiful leather dress covered with circlets of shell.
Roe slipped it on and smoothed it over her hips. Pitch stared at her with longing before reaching to stroke her hair.
“Before you put your shirt on, Pitch, let me tend your wound.”
He nodded wearily and tossed their old clothes onto the flames. “We must not couple for three days.”
Dogrib’s head jerked up in horror. “That doesn’t include me, does it?”
“It does. And the other warriors in your group as well.”
“Are you joking?” Dogrib gaped in alarm.