Natilyan the Grand Master of Artistry

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Role

Chapter 1

...wash the wounds, wash the face.
A woman's work, they said.
...cut the cloth, braid the hair, bind the arms
across the chest.
That's what comes from a father too old, they said.
Come out from behind your mother's skirts, they said,
but no one dared breach the tent while the women prepared the body for its
rest.

The men who kept the histories and raised the glasses of honey wine told of
the deceased's glory in battle, of his charm, his daring exploits, or the
strength of his seed bearing generations of fruit. This is one way to honor
the dead.

Tears are for the women, they said.
And so they let them weep, trembling together in a close circle, like doves
crowding around cast grains of wheat. But inside this circle of tears? No
muffled whimpers. There, washing the corpse, the women joke about the size
of his sexual organs. They worry over their unmarried daughters.
They remember a night of youthful dancing.
They fear their son will be next.

When the time comes to display the body, washed, bound, and pure now, their
tears change again. Now the women lash out, their mouths filled with venom
for the bringer of this death. A foul sorcerer had cursed him, surely. A
lecherous soldier cut her life short. Or we perhaps we ourselves were at
fault, our recent lapse into idleness or wickedness surely the cause. No one
is spared blame.

It is these words I learned.
These shrieks and cries for justice.
That bitter venom.
Those small memories.
These words lend the dead more dignity than any chiseled monument.

As a child they let me stay near and I braided this music into my own mind,
but a grown man could not linger in the funeral hut. Women's work, they
called it when I was young, but that women's work was now all I knew, yet I
was unfit to practice. My hands knew not the heft of a spear or curve of the
bow, so elsewhere must I seek my fortune.

May my body return here to these green peaks when it is my time to washed,
braided, and bound.