When he was found, the horn was blown to signal the Death of a clan member. The entire village came, early as it was. The bluesun had only just risen and the red was still some time off. I had only slept for a little while, judging from how foggy I was. HoPa lifted me up and LoPa held Medis’ hand and Medis held Akmuo’s.

  “What is it, HoPa?”

  Mother’s hand grazed my cheek, “Someone has died.”

  It hit me like the butt of a knife. I knew right away it was Lapas, and I wept. For his loneliness. Leaning for mother, she took me from HoPa and carried me the long way to MotherTree.

  The sky was clear and kissed with blues and greens from the bluesun. It should’ve been raining. I remember thinking that. I wanted to ask why it wasn’t raining. How could the sky be so cruel? How could she not cry for those who died?

  Mother said, “We used to howl when one of our own died.”

  HoPa grunted, “First Mother fears the wolfgods.”

  Mother snorted, “She shouldn’t be First Mother of the Wolf Clan then.”

  Everyone was gathered round Lapas and First Mother. Everyone dressed in the colors of leaves. Yellows, reds, browns, and blues, but purple was the dominant color. Our color of mourning and celebration. It was so quiet. Quieter than it should’ve been. I couldn’t even hear mother’s heart or her breathing. Or my own.

  Then I saw it. A figure so black it seemed wrong. Like nothing could be so dark. Like a vortex, sucking the light from the day. Despite that, it seemed ephemeral. Like it wasn’t really there. Like it was a phantom. Its existence fluctuating between realities.

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  Mother shifted me to her shoulders, and I felt the vibration of her lungs and neck but heard nothing. The darkness moved like a shadow and it came close to Lapas. It lifted his head in its impossibly pale hands. We were far away, but I could see his bright white eyes. They were open. They blinked. Lapas was alive.

  I tried to shout but it died the moment it crossed my lips.

  The shadow held Lapas’ face and then it held nothing. Lapas became a cloud of dust, drifting in the wind. Falling to the dirt, to the roots of MotherTree. And then the shadow was gone as if it had never been there.

  Sound erupted back into the world and I sucked in my breath so loud it startled me and I almost fell from mother’s shoulders. I was shaking uncontrollably, and not because of the wintry morning.

  First Mother gathered the dust that was once Lapas and rubbed it into the soil beside the trunk of MotherTree. She sang then, but I couldn’t see through my tears or hear over the sound of our heartbeats. I wept the long way back home. My brothers and fathers stayed at MotherTree, to watch the rest of the funeral. To be a part of the clan in grief, but mother took me home.

  It was dark and warm and mother lay with me. She held me close, calling me her little moon. She stroked my face and put her forehead against mine, teaching me how to breathe. She told me that the shadow was a Deathwalker, that they bring us all to the infinite ocean where all our bodies are united with the Mother, the goddess of Death and Light. She told me how his ashes would be given to MotherTree and he would become a part of her. He would be able to reach down to the bones of Saol through Her roots. How he would kiss the sky through Her boughs.

  But all I could think of was Lapas weeping. Lapas smiling as the Deathwalker turned him to ash. The touch of his cold, clammy skin. How I had given him his last breaths. How I was the last person he saw before Death came to answer his calls. Because I understood then, lying with my mother, my lungs burning from pain and sorrow. I understood that he was calling Death that night. He was begging for release. Release from life. From pain. An end to everything.

  He thanked me. I gave him hope. Gave him enough courage to die.

  And it hollowed me out.

  It nearly broke me.

  Would have broken me if not for discovering wooden Whaaloo deep in the forest.