Chapter 23: The Willow

The burying ground lay on the north slope, under a fog that had not yet lifted.

I stood in front of a flat grey stone with the number 114 cut into it.

Aldric had chosen that stone.

The pack had put it up, because an Alpha said to, and nobody had read it as anything but a number.

Kellan picked up the first spade.

"No," I said.

He stopped.

"Not you. Not yet."

My parents stood at the edge of the plot with two men of the guard behind them.

My mother had her shawl pulled over her head, and my father held his hat.

Neither of them had slept.

"Dig," I said.

My father looked at me.

"Dig her up," I said again. "With a spade, and nobody to help."

"She's been under that number for fifteen years, and you've walked past it."

"Brigid," my mother whispered.

"Dig."

My father took the spade from Kellan's hand.

He drove it into the frozen soil, and it rang.

The pack had gathered in a wide quiet half circle behind us.

I saw Hester, with her glasses off.

I saw the farmer's wife with chapped hands and the old man with the cane.

I saw the little girl in the red coat holding her mother's skirt.

I saw the two elders who had knelt.

They stood in the front row, and they did not look away.

It took my father an hour.

My mother knelt in the dirt and dug with her hands where the spade could not reach.

Neither of them spoke.

Sweat and tears ran down my father's face.

When the spade struck wood, he put it down.

He climbed out of the hole on his knees.

"I can't," he said hoarsely. "I can't lift her."

"You can," I said.

"Brigid."

"You wanted the deed more than you wanted her. Now lift her."

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