The first earth went down on the captain’s box a little after dawn, and the Murmur woke in the Ferryman’s chair with the spade’s weight still in her arms.
She knew the weight of turf as a hand knows a loaf. She knew the length of a spade’s handle and the cold that comes up off wet clay in midsummer before the sun has got over the wall. She knew the names, because she had been given them in the wind for months, one at a time, and she had kept every one of them under her tongue like a stone she was not allowed to swallow. Now she had a trade. She was grave-tending. The Mourn family had been waiting for her, and she sat up on the Mound’s grey stone with her hands loose on her knees, and she was awake.
The garrison stood in a line along the Mound with their caps in their hands. There were nine of them left standing, which was one fewer than the stone had space for, and the captain’s box lay at the head of the trench under a wet cloth. Harrow stood beside the stone itself. He had cut nine names into it in the spring, each with its trade beneath, and he had left a tenth place blank at the end of the row because a Mason does not carve a name until he has been told it. He had his palm flat on the stone’s face. Mourner could…
