Burial Rites

I wondered where’d my tribesmen’s souls be reborned now Valleyswomen’d not be bearin’ babbits here. I wished Abbess was there to teach me, ’cos I cudn’t say an’ nor could Meronym. We Prescients, she answered, after a beat, b’lief when you die you die an’ there ain’t no comin’ back. But what ’bout your soul? I asked. Prescients don’t b’lief souls ex

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it seemed lazy – unkind, even – to let her lie here in this icy stillness. I wanted her to have the dancing light and the whisper of the flames to keep her company … But what fool would heat a room with a corpse in it? And I could imagine de Havilland’s face when he saw me climbing the stairs with a basket of logs. I turned away. There was no point

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It was too big to talk about, what had happened. It was like a landscape they could not see all at once; it was like the sky at night, which turned and turned so they couldn’t find its edges. It would always feel too big. He pushed her in. And then he pulled her out. All her life, Lydia would remember one thing. All his life, Nath would remember an

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