Embrace The Twilight. Maggie Shayne

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      Gervaise set the young men a few paces away on either side, close enough to guard the women while they worked over the body, but far enough away to give them the privacy that was necessary for the rite. Katerina had taken Melina back to camp, to set her to work gathering the clothes with which Belinda would be buried. While she was gone, Sarafina arranged twigs and sticks carefully on the ground beside her cousin, but not too close.

      Katerina returned, three bundles of dried herbs in her hands. She handed her sister a bit of each. “Are we ready to begin?” she asked.

      Sarafina nodded, and lowered her torch to the pile of twigs and sticks. It caught on the first try, a very good omen. The flames spread rapidly. Fina jammed the torch into a notch in a nearby tree.

      “First the thyme,” she said, and they each tossed a handful of the herb into the fire.

      “Next the sage,” Katerina whispered. “And last the rosemary.”

      They cast the remaining herbs into the fire in the correct order, then began to walk backward and countersunwise around it as fragrant drafts of smoke billowed to the heavens. “Belinda Rosemerta Prastika,” they whispered together. They walked round the fire, round the body, and increased their pace, chanting the name of their cousin over and over, a little louder each time. Seven times around the fire they went, and Sarafina felt the power they raised growing stronger all the while. At the end of the seventh time around, they stopped, each at the same instant, faced the body and lifted their hands.

      Sarafina felt the energy-and, she hoped, her cousin’s spirit with it-shoot forth from the circle they had trod, straight into the heavens.

      Letting their bodies relax, they stood still and silent, each in her own thoughts.

      Sarafina closed her eyes and sighing, lowered herself to the ground.

      “The ritual is the job of the Shuvani, ” Katerina said. “One of honor. And we have done it well. Preparing the body is not.”

      Handling a dead body was a despised task among the tribe. When their own grandmother had passed, she had been bathed and dressed in her finest clothes even while she lay dying. No Gypsy wanted to touch the dead.

      “Perhaps Gervaise wishes to teach us the lesson of humility,” Sarafina suggested. “Quiet, now. Melina returns.”

      Melina carried a bundle of clothing, a pail of water scented with herbs and oils, and a soft cloth. She glanced at the small fire that had been left to burn itself out but said nothing. She had lived a long time and had no doubt seen the fire before. She knew better than to ask its meaning. The death rites were secret, known only to the Shuvani, passed from grandmother to granddaughter. Sarafina and her sister had learned them from their grandmother, as they had so many other things.

      Melina knelt, watching in silence, waiting for the two of them to do the job they had been given. Sarafina thought in that moment, that even her hardhearted sister felt moved.

      So they knelt, and they gently undressed the shell that had been Belinda. They washed the young woman carefully, even though every touch made chills race up Sarafina’s spine. Belinda was not yet cold, but cool to the touch. She tried to keep the cloth between her palm and Belinda’s flesh, but sometimes it slipped.

      When the washing was finished, the two women unrolled and unfolded the red fabric Melina had brought; then they laid it out beside Belinda. Sarafina rolled the dead woman up onto one side, because she knew that while touching the corpse chilled her to her very marrow, her sister simply could not bring herself to do it. So she rolled poor Belinda, and Katerina tucked the cloth beneath her as far as she could manage. Then Fina lowered the body gently onto the cloth and rolled it up onto its other side, so Katerina could pull the fabric through.

      They did a good job of it, Sarafina thought. The body rested almost perfectly centered on the open bolt of scarlet cloth.

      Sarafina laid a small bit of fabric, cut in the shape of a perfect circle, upon Belinda’s chest. Then, she took one side of the cloth, and her sister took the other, and they wrapped Belinda in it as carefully as they would have wrapped a baby, leaving only her head and her bare feet uncovered.

      “I intended to use that bolt of cloth to make a dress for her,” Melina whispered. “Now it becomes her shroud.” She unfolded the clothing she had brought, turning the blouse and skirt inside out before refolding them carefully and stacking them beside her daughter’s body.

      The little fire had died to smoking remains by the time they had finished. Katerina leaned over the water pail to scrub her hands.

      “There should be more light,” Melina whispered. “We mustn’t let her lie in the dark this way.”

      “My work here is done,” Katerina said, straightening and wiping her hands on her skirts. “I’m returning to camp. I’ll send someone back with lanterns.”

      Melina only nodded, not even watching her go. When the sounds of her footsteps died away, she glanced at Sarafina. “You may as well go, too. I’ll watch over her until morning.”

      “I’m staying with you,” Sarafina replied. “I won’t leave you alone.”

      Melina lifted her head, met Fina’s eyes, and for a moment seemed to be searching them. Almost as if she were not entirely comfortable staying alone with her. It was dark in the hardwood forest. Oaks and elms towered around them, and the ground was thick with ferns and weeds. Only that single torch spilled a circle of pale light around the two of them, and it was burning low. The night was silent, eerily so.

      Then Melina glanced past her, at a sound from one of the young men who stood guard, and she seemed to relax a bit. Sarafina sat down on the ground beside the slender body wrapped in red cloth and wondered why anyone, even a demon, would want to murder her cousin so cruelly.

       I didn’t kill her, I set her free, and deep down you know it’s true.

      Sarafina’s head rose with a snap at the clear sound of a man’s voice. A man she knew full well was not her beloved spirit. “Who is that?”

      Melina paused in her rocking. “What are you talking about?”

      “That voice. Didn’t you hear it?” She got to her feet, brushing the twigs from her skirts and staring at the woods around her, every sense on full alert, her very skin prickling and aware. There was laughter then, deep, ringing laughter. “There,” she whispered. “Don’t you hear that?”

      “I hear nothing, Sarafina,” the old woman said. She got up, as well, backing a few steps away from the younger girl. “Perhaps…you should go back to camp.”

      “No. It’s out here. I can’t leave you alone.”

       That’s right. I’m here. But you know deep down it’s not the old woman I want. It’s you, Sarafina. It’s always been you. Leave this band of traitors and come to me.

      “No!” she cried, pressing her hands to her ears. “Leave me alone! Leave me alone!” She turned to run away, but collided instantly with a hard chest and looked up and into Andre’s concerned eyes. Sobbing, she clung to him, burying her face against his chest.

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