Chapter 59: New day
Chapter 59
Night owns the clearing.
Above, the moon hung swollen and pale, spilling silver light over the clearing where the pyre stood. The air was heavy with the mingled scents of pine, pain, and grief.
Lenora stepped forward slowly, every movement feeling both too fast and too slow. The world had gone strangely muffled for her—she could hear the distant chatter of birds in the forest, the crunch of earth under her boots, the faint rustle of wind through the pine branches—but it all seemed far away, like she was underwater.
Her father lay before her, wrapped in white linen, the shape of his body still unmistakable beneath the shroud. She could see the slope of his shoulders, the length of his legs, the way his hands rested over his chest as though still in thought but he wasn’t in thought, he was gone.
She bent down, her hair falling like a curtain around her face, and pressed her lips gently to his forehead one last time. The skin beneath was cool—no longer her father’s warmth, only the stillness of someone who had already gone.
Her throat tightened, but she did not cry. Not yet.
She straightened and stepped back.
The pack witch—known to everyone simply as Nana—moved forward with slow, deliberate steps.
The lines of her weathered face were deep, but her hands were steady as she sprinkled fine white powder onto Eamon’s forehead. She murmured something in the old tongue, the syllables thick and rolling like the echo of stones turning under water.
"Finally," Nana murmured, her voice so low it was almost part of the wind, "you can make your home."
She stepped back, her expression unreadable, and began covering Eamon’s body fully with the white sheet.