The Women Who Marry Ghosts

The Elders

The apprentices were just waking up, stretching and discussing dreams, when the Seer lurched into the hut. Light scattered and the younger ones started. The older ones merely turned to them, lips tight.

"It is time," the Seer told the apprentices. "The spirits will choose from the most worthy of you. Ready yourselves, and I will ready the village."

The apprentices knew they would be confined to pray nonstop, every day and every night for weeks, until the preparations were finished. So they shut themselves in their hut and lit the sacred fires.

The villagers did not notice immediately. After all, the Seer frequently chanted spells and chased away mischievous spirits with their bones and shells. But it became obvious once the Seer began dressing in their ceremonial wraps and paints, sweeping dust from corners with graceful arcs of their hands. Another witnessed them huddling near certain doorways, tsking, and then burning sweet grasses in every vacant fire pit. But they weren't sure until someone saw them clustering their crystals in empty skulls, to bathe them under the light of a full moon. That's when the village knew the apprentices were ready without a similar announcement. A great buzz rose amongst the people, growing louder each day. Choosing new elders happened once in a lifetime, sometimes less.

The ceremony required the help of everyone in the village. The old began by bundling sacred herbs. The village would need to call upon the spirits which required heaps of sacred herbs for everyone. They took small fistfuls of the sweet, pungent stalks and wrapped them in fine twine made from cow hide. Their fingers moved deftly, spectacularly, with youthful vigor most had not been capable of in years. They woke up early and stayed up late to finish their monumental task, grinning and gossiping.

The young took up the task of harvesting. They stripped the gardens bare of anything edible then they cleaned and categorized the spoils. The night of the ceremony, the children would drizzle sacred honey over the vegetables. Then, they would wrap them in thick, green leaves to be roasted over hot coals. The children of the village had to work hard, ask questions, and help one another to complete such an undertaking. Their commitment made mothers and fathers glow as they watched the next generation carefully stack the crops next to the cooking pits.

"Your body is of my body," they said at almost every turn, still not sure how to use such a proclamation.

"And I will honor your body," was the insistent reply.

The teenagers were assigned more menial tasks. Despite being fickle and full of strange energy, their grumbles faded as the village shone thanks to their hard work. They collected mountains of firewood and cleaned the village of debris and wayward junk. They tidied up after the children (roots, clods of dirt everywhere) and the old (twists of straw, errant stems, crunched leaves). Others gathered copious amounts of water from the well, or fermented beer in every available vat, or sweated over boiling pans of beef tallow while frying grain patty after grain patty after grain patty. This work exhausted them, smoothing sharp edges to something softer, gentler. They quarreled less in those days. Eventually, they swept neighbors' huts without being asked. They milked the cows without expecting something in return, even a break. They gave each other small gifts, an embrace, a kind word, a helping hand. Simply because it was needed and they were happy to do it.

The adults shouldered the more burdensome chores. They collected the sacred honey, despite the risk of bees the size of a steer's horn. If they didn't pluck their stingers out in time, they were studded with hard, black cysts that squirted yellow pus at the lightest touch. The adults were reduced to lumps of aching flesh for days at a time. Luckily, they had the youth to help them. When they recovered, they hunted big game and used every part for food or for ceremony. The finest hides and bones were set aside as gifts for the new elders. Some villagers began stitching stone and delicate shells in swirls and patterns onto the hides. These would be given to the new elders after the Seer called their names.