cart came to the town of Marob, jarring along the deep ruts from street to street, and so to Harn Der’s house, where the funeral feast was held. The men were there already; they had been drinking, and some had cut their cheeks as well as their hands. Her father was covered with a black blanket, only slit in two places for his eyes and mouth. Tarrik was there, with his high crown showing over every head; but no one spoke to him now unless they had to, and Erif Der noticed with an odd calm how much thinner he was getting every week. When he sat down at the table, the man on each side of him edged away, till there was a space both ways; he looked straight in front of him, white rather than flushed, pressing his thumbs into a piece of bread. After a time, Erif Der left her sister and came slowly over and sat down at her husband’s right hand; she heard his checked breathing deepen, and felt him stir a little on the bench beside her. One or two of the men stared at her; but she knew the Chief was not unlucky—only magicked; how should she be afraid of what she had done herself?
Every one was hungry after their long ride or drive in from the burying in the plains; they ate without talking much at first—boiled mutton passed round hot and steaming in the three-legged cauldrons, with garlic and beans and salsify, and stewed fish, and soft, sweetish strings of seaweed. Tarrik ate little, though; obscurely, that began to worry Erif Der, and she put bits from her own plate on to his. She could not eat either, but this was partly because she knew that soon her father was going to talk to her, urge her, put his will in place of her own. While she was still a child that had not mattered; but now she was a woman, four months married. She sat up very straight and lifted her head, heavy with the weight of the stiff cone and veil she wore. People were staring at her as well as at Tarrik.
Suddenly it seemed to her that there was an unwarrantable amount of unhappiness in the room; not much for the dead, magic woman, except perhaps from her father and the old nurse; but for all sorts of other things. Tarrik was unhappy, of course, because she had magicked him, because he hated not being favourite with the people any longer, and he hated having done anything badly, failed so completely as he had that twice when he had been in her power; and because she had disturbed the sure base of his judgment. And Berris Der was unhappy; she did not quite know why, but there was some fight going on inside him, where sometimes one side won, and sometimes the other. He sat forward with his head on his hands, looking like he did after he had broken the little horse. The people who stared so at Tarrik were unhappy too, because they knew something had gone wrong with him, with the Corn King, and they thought of their seed corn rotting; and yet they still did not know what to do. Uncertainty, that was it, thought Erif, that was what made people unhappy. And she herself? No, she was not unhappy, she was not uncertain, she had her hand on the plow. Angrily, she began to eat again, picked up a bone and cracked it between her strong back teeth.
It was dark before the funeral feast was over. They bolted the shutters and heaped the fires up; there was a rising wind that might turn to storm before the night was out. One by one the guests went away, with their coats drawn tight about them and their fur caps over their ears. Tarrik was one of the last; he stayed on, as if he had been hoping for something; but Erif Der said she must stay this night in her father’s house, for the last things to be done, and bade him go home, out of the death circle. He took up his great cloak of white fox fur, and the gold scales along the edges jingled stupidly. After a moment she followed him to the door, but he was riding home, and did not turn his head once to look for her. She could just hear the sea now, a low continuous dashing on the beach, filling all the air, coming up past the houses; she thought the weather must have broken for the year.
The children were in bed and asleep by now; she kissed them and talked for a little to Essro, and then came back to her father and brothers. Such of her mother’s things as had not been buried with her were laid out on a table beside the hearth; they had to watch that night in case she came for any of them. Harn Der had taken off the black blanket, and lay back in his chair, tired and yellow-looking. She sat at the other end of the table, the brothers at each side; they said over together certain words, and then stayed still. For a time no one spoke; Erif began to think of her mother again, and wondered if it would really be so terribly frightening if she were to come back. Whatever she had felt, love or indifference, she had always been able to trust her mother utterly while she had been alive; but now she was dead one could not be sure; she might be different, changed into something cold and waxen and hurtful. It was this that was frightening. She shifted a little in her chair, clutching the arms and sweating lightly; her father broke silence at last, and they were all glad.
‘Your work is nearly done,’ he said to her, ‘but you must go on to the finish. A step backward now, and all would be to begin again.’
‘Yes, father,’ she said, ‘I know. I have done my best for you.’
‘Only twice,’ said Yellow Bull, and bit the end of a finger-nail.
‘Twice, that you saw!’ she said indignantly, ‘but you don’t see everything, Yellow Bull! And what a twice—Midsummer and Harvest! He did the words backwards and the Dance wrong, he—’
But Yellow Bull interrupted her, a little nervously: ‘Well, better not speak of it!—not—not till next year’s corn is up.’
Erif Der leant forward: ‘I have not hurt the corn!’ she said. ‘I tell you again, I went myself that night with his crown and the sacred Things! I built the Year-house again, by myself. I am Spring Queen, it is in my hands too! If there is any bad luck it is not my doing, but yours, Yellow Bull—you, who won’t believe me!’ She stopped, with tears in her eyes: it had been so terrible doing those Things alone, letting the Powers sweep through her, standing between bare Earth and Sky, with the sun in one hand and the rain in the other, knowing that her own magic was nothing beside this stolen Godhead. But none of the others understood; they could not imagine it. She had done it twice, and the second time was the worst, at Harvest, when she had gone alone to the stubblefield and bound herself difficultly with straw, and then gone back at midnight to the door of the Corn King’s house and spoken herself the right words to the sleeping actor in the Corn Play; it had seemed to her that years had fallen on her, that she was an old woman, worn out like her mother. And this was all the thanks she got from Yellow Bull! Berris leaned over and patted her knee; she blinked the tears out of her eyes and stared across at her father. ‘Well,’ she said, low, ‘what am I to do?’
‘Finish!’ said Harn Der, ‘the Council are ready. They know me and they know my son‘—he looked at Yellow Bull who was still worrying at his broken nail—‘and as for the people, they would give him up this moment if they saw another Corn King. Erif Der, we count on you.’
She knew she wanted to say something, but could not think what it was. Berris spoke for her. ‘But, father, what good will she get from all this? She is Spring Queen now, she has all the treasure of Marob if she chooses to call for it: suppose she doesn’t like to give all that up?’ And he glanced from her to the others, and back again; he was wondering a little what sort of Spring Queen Essro would make when Yellow Bull was Corn King.
‘I will give you anything you like, Erif,’ said Harn Der, ‘and your marriage shall be undone at once. You shall still have what power you choose—after all, you have more power now than any of us.’ He laughed, a little nervously. ‘In a year you will have forgotten all this. There is nothing to make you not forget, Erif?’
‘No,’ she said sharply, ‘I am not going to have a child—yet.’
‘All the more reason to finish quick,’ said her father.
By now all Marob was asleep except these four; they could hear nothing but the wind, and the wood-fire burning quietly beside them, and their own movements and voices. They dropped to whispering. Berris wanted to talk about a new idea of his, the way certain curves, running into certain other curves, gave him a feeling of sureness in the heart; but he knew his father and brother were not interested, and Erif Der was too deeply absorbed
