The Dead Man's Doll by Kathleen O’Neal Gear Page B

fighting skills. As she valued theirs. Madyrut had been happy for a few moons. The bark and twig voices had left her alone so that she could fight to protect her people. Though she had seen only fourteen winters, Madyrut had been a good warrior. She had died swinging her club to save a friend. In the end, she hadn’t been strong enough to save herself. Or…had she tried? Had she actually defended herself?
    â€œOf course, you did. Stop thinking like that.” Asson stared at the chestnut with kind eyes. He could not see her in there, and that was probably part of her reason for clinging to the old tree.
    Her People had given up. They no longer spoke her name aloud, lest they draw her angry soul back to the village. They chased from their minds all memories of her silken waist-length hair and pug nose, her blue, porcupine-quill war shirt and feet that were way too big. When her blood seeped into the earth, her skin shrank over her skull and made her staring eyes huge. She had watched for them. She had waited. After a few days, they’d stopped looking for her. No one cared now that she would never make it to the blessed afterlife.
    The smell of steeping water lily assaulted Asson’s nostrils. He sneezed. Scratched. Found it hard to breathe. Tuberous water lily was a ghost medicine. It prevented the illnesses caused by ghosts.
    â€œI am prepared for today. You don’t have to protect me. If that’s what you’re doing.”
    She’s coming, and she’s powerful.
    â€œDon’t concern yourself with her. For today, just think about yourself, Madyrut. This is the tenth day. You are almost out of time.”
    Have you seen her coming?
    â€œYes, of course.”
    When the slant of sunlight changed, the bare ground at the base of the old chestnut flashed and sparkled. There were so many. The tears of the dead turned to quartz crystals. Where the shafts of sunlight touched them, they shot glimmers into the twigs and bark of the tree. The echoes of those tears would remain until long after humans had passed from the earth. Tears turned to bark and twig voices.
    He’s here.
    â€œHe?” The word jarred Asson. For nine days, she’d been talking about a
she
coming.
    From Asson’s left, he saw movement. Lost things slipping from holes in the ground?
    A boy appeared. He may have seen five or six winters. He had a dirty face and soot-coated shirt that hung to his knees. His faded red leather leggings had worn thin in spots, as though they’d been handed down many times. He ran a grimy hand beneath his beaked nose.
    â€œYou’d better leave,” the boy said in a dire voice.
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œDead people make you sick. They come in the afternoon and at night. If you’re drinking Spirit plant broths to get well, they spoil it by putting a finger in it. They want to make others sick, so they will die and join them. She’ll get you.”
    â€œShe hasn’t gotten you, has she?”
    The boy cocked his head, then shook it. “You’re not very smart for an elder.”
    Asson’s mouth quirked. An odd gleam lit the child’s black eyes.
    The boy pointed to the chestnut. “There’s a ghost underneath that tree. Nobody loves her anymore. You’d better leave before she sees you.”
    Asson stared at him. “How do you know there’s a ghost there?”
    â€œShe told me she’s dead.”
    Asson paused to think about that. “Which means that when you first heard her voice you thought she was alive. So she talks to you?”
    No answer. The boy just drew designs in the leaves with one foot. His shoulder-length black hair was knotted and filled with old leaves and twigs, as though he’d been lying in the forest looking up through the canopy at the drifting clouds.
    â€œAre you afraid of her?”
    â€œI’m not afraid of anything,” he announced, puffing out his chest. “But my friends would be.