The nurse was fetched to take her away, and that meant that Marra did not see Damia leave, with all the pomp and ceremony of a bride going to her bridegroom’s kingdom.
She was watching five months later, though, when Damia’s body was brought home in state.
There was a black wagon pulled by six black horses, flanked by riders dressed in mourning bands. There were three black carriages before and after the wagon, the curtains drawn. Their horses, too, were black. They had black bridles and black saddles and black barding.
It struck Marra, watching, as an extravagance of grief. Someone wanted the world to know how sad he could afford to be.
“A fall,” said the whispers. “The prince is heartbroken. They say she was carrying his child.”
Marra shook her head. It was not possible. The world could not be so poorly ordered that Damia could be allowed to die.
She did not cry, because she did not believe that Damia was dead.
It seemed very strange that everyone else did believe it. They ran back and forth, sometimes weeping, more often planning the details of the funeral.
Marra crept into the chapel that night. If she could prove that the body lying there was not Damia, then all the foolishness of funerals could be set aside.
The shrouded figure smelled strongly of camphor. There was a death mask atop the shroud. It was Damia, her face composed.
Marra stared at the figure for a little while and thought that it had been several days since they had heard of Damia’s death. They had been cool days, but not cold. The camphor could not quite chase out the scent of decay.
If she tried to push aside the death mask and tear off the shroud, she would see a rotting corpse. Who knew what it would look like?
I was thinking like a little child, she thought angrily. Thinking that I would be able to tell if it was Damia. It could be anyone under there at all.
Even her.
She crept away and left the shroud undisturbed.
The funeral was lavish but rushed. The riders that the prince had sent were better dressed than Marra’s mother and father. Marra resented her parents for being shabby and resented the prince for making it obvious.
They lowered the body into the ground. It could have been Damia. It could have been anyone. Marra’s father wept, and Marra’s mother stared straight ahead, her knuckles white where they gripped her cane.
Days followed, one after another, chasing each other into weeks. Marra came to believe that it had been Damia, mostly because everyone else seemed to believe it, but by then it seemed too late to mourn, and anyway, how could such a thing be possible?
She tried, once, to say something to Kania.
“Of course she’s dead,” said her sister shortly. “She’s been dead for months.”
“Has she?” asked Marra. “I mean—she has. But … dead! Really? Does it make any sense to you?”
Kania stared at her. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “It doesn’t have to make sense. People just die, that’s all.”
“I guess,” said Marra. She sat down on the edge of the bed. “I mean … everybody says she is.”
“They wouldn’t lie about it,” said Kania. “Marrying the prince meant that we were going to be safe. If Damia’s dead, then the prince will marry someone else and we’ll be in danger again.”
Marra said nothing. She had not thought of that, either.
I must start to think like a grown-up. Kania is doing it better than I am.
The two years between them seemed suddenly vast, full of things that Marra knew but had never thought about.
Kania sighed. She reached over and hugged Marra with one arm. “I miss her, too,” she said.
Marra accepted the hug, though she knew her sister hated her. Hate, like love, was apparently complicated.
* * *
The edge of the blistered land was before her. Marra looked at it for nearly a minute, thinking.
It was strange how clear the edge was. It looked like the shadow cast by a cloud. This bit here was dark and that bit was bright. It took a moment or two for wind blowing from one side to reach the other.
She could hear the crows calling back and forth. The ones on the outside sounded like normal crows—Awk! Awk! Awk!
The ones over her head sounded like Gah-ha-hawk! Gah-ha-hawk!
She wondered if the outside crows hated the crows of the blistered land the way that the villagers outside hated the people inside. They had warned her against going inside.
“They’ll kill you soon as look at you,” one man had said, leaning against the fence. A second man—his friend or his brother, Marra wasn’t sure—nodded in time. “It’s creeping,” the second man said. “Gets a little bigger every year.”