The girl clamps her hands on the fraying wicker. The stout legs wobble and her mother, standing a few steps away, descends to her haunches and reaches out. The child lets go of the chair and balances for a moment before her mother scoops her up. There is a cheer. Did she take a step? Nodding heads seem to agree that she did. The child does not yet know how important she is. She is the first child born in two years. Dochas is her name.

  I could figure out exactly how I am related to her, and who our common ancestor is, but it would take a long afternoon of reckoning. Everyone born to someone of the Doonish clan is my sister or brother, whether we have the same parents.

  We are making ready for a burial. The full count of the Doonish clan is there, the female side anyway - all eight of us. It is rare that the hut is so full. Our combined exhalations hang sultry and oppressive in the thin air. With my finger, I mark out a sign in the shining vapours collected on the mud wall. The top half of a circle, a line extended from its highest point – ‘hot.’

  Solamar, the mother of the baby, occupies the only chair, its narrow wooden feet digging square holes into the earthen floor. You wonder if she would be happier on the ground with the rest of us, but with chairs in such short supply, I can see why she used it. They wouldn’t be slow about taking it away again. My cross-brother, Malek, is the only one in the village with the ability to twine fronds into sturdy furniture, but he has little time to focus his efforts, given his other duties. The Mister should have permitted him the chance to pass on his skills but I fear, given his age, that it is already too late. We often allow such skills to disappear here in Clabby. The village shambles from one generation to the next, ready to collapse at any moment.

  ‘How are you coming along with the recounting, Erna?’ It is Lonrack who asks.

  ‘Good,’ I say. ‘I think Nolu and I are coming to a good way of working.’

  I am due to take over from Nolu as the knowledge-keeper for the chronicle of Artain, our fourth Mister. In a few months, I would have to stand before the village and tell her story.

  I have worked out a system of markings that let me work on it when he is not around. A collection of symbols that stand for various parts of the narrative. It is not ready, but I hope it will help. I don’t see how I will manage otherwise.

  ‘I wonder if this visitor will be here today?’ I say, wanting to talk about something else. The visitor is everyone’s favourite topic these days. None of us have ever seen an outsider.

  ‘Somebody said he was tall,’ says Clarsack, pinching the cuff of her shirt. ‘That he would have to stoop to get through the doorway.’

  ‘I spoke to Tenta in the mess yesterday,’ adds Kinsel. ‘She said that he had a wet face, like he had just crawled out of the river.’

  ‘She saw him?’

  ‘No, but her Baran did.’

  Baran is the shiner. The person who works most closely with the Mister, making sure that all developments followed the Magward, the original way of living.

  ‘I’m surprised the outsider is still here, if Baran had anything to say about it,’ says Clarsack. ‘He probably wanted to send him back down the hill again, whether he was sick or not.’

  We found the outsider two days ago, lying in the mud at the edge of the village square. It was Fonn, of the Engens, who found him and raised the alarm with the Barr hut. The Mister herself helped carry the outsider up the stairs to the sleeping chamber, where he now convalesces. Fonn has stayed in the Barr hut ever since, forbidden from going out, we’re told, while the Mister and Baran decide what to do. But the word is out. The Mister will have to call a meeting to explain. I feel bad for the Morovans – it is their matriarch we lay to rest today. It will be difficult to concentrate on committing her remains, with so much going on. Such gossip is discouraged by the way of living, but there is nobody that loves to stir the pot more than us. What else is there to entertain us?

  The rattle sounds outside, the scratch of a branch against a notched piece of wood. The ritual is about to begin. We lift ourselves to our feet and the chatter ceases as we make our way through the curtain to the square.

  Outside, the sun refuses to shine. Winter is long over, but the sun sits stubbornly behind its grey blanket.

  The soft outdoor mud finds homes between our toes as we walk. Inside, the floor has a hard smoothness upon which a foot barely leaves its impression. This softness is more what the Gaffer had in mind, you feel, all those generations ago, when he brought the original families from Chiram. Walkers adjust their journeys, even if they go to the same place every day. Adjust the traject, so a path can never form, as the saying goes. The earth outside remains loose and formless, accommodating pools between shallow ramparts. No two steps are the same.

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  I tuck a thumb into the ceremonial cord hanging around my shoulder. It is a novelty to have something to fidget with – I wear the thing so seldom. Members of the Torrain clan, the one Baran belongs to, have started to wear it every day. They often dangle a little pouch on the end of it, carrying scrapings of mud from their feet. Our feet are in constant contact with the ancestors, says Baran, so there is much to discern there. He reckons that by looking closely at the scrapings, we can better understand our ancestors’ wishes. The practice has not yet become widespread, but you feel that it will. Baran is forceful enough to make it so.

  There are two parallel lines etched into the dirt underfoot, the distance between them as wide as a dead matriarch’s backside. We fall into formation with the other clans, who have emerged from the respective male and female huts. Looks and signs of greeting pass between us as we follow the lines. Here and there a quiet conversation begins. We gather handfuls of the mud as we go, rubbing it on our arms and faces and patting cakes on to our hair, keen to look the part for the ceremony. The entire village is on the move, a brown throng making our way towards the dwelling place.

  We make our way past the mound, around the earth chamber, where villagers can go to engage in Turas. The earth becomes clay now beneath our feet, rich and sinewy. The smell increases as we descend into the hollow, towards the little hut with the grey jureen skull fixed to its roof. The door lies open, but nothing can be seen inside. The smell puts me in mind of clan members who have passed. It is the smell of the earth reclaiming its belongings.

  The dwelling place is one of only three wooden constructions in the village. There is also the Gaffer’s original homeplace and the Barr hut. We have lost the habit of large-scale wooden construction. The skills are there, more or less, but the needful quantity of decent wood is hard to come by.

  The Mister is there, hands clasped together. Baran is there too, his hair and beard heavily packed under wet mud. Nobody can cake it like him.

  Alongside them on the ground is a long lumpen sheet of fabric that covers the body to be transferred. This is where the two lines terminate, the marks left by the dragged heels of Tana, matriarch of the Morovans. No Mudder body can be out of contact with the earth, not even a dead one. The lines remain as a memorial, fading over time under the comings and goings of Mudder feet. Their disappearance marks the end of mourning. If I look closely, I can still see the faint traces of the lines my mother made six or so moons ago.

  The conversations stop and we settle to the floor, on either side of the shallow pathway. It is comfortable here, the soft earth embracing our backsides.

  The Mister and Baran bring their hands behind their backs and the ceremony begins. The Mister begins to speak.

  ‘We no longer will see Tana,’ she says, ‘but she will be with us. She will join the Gaffer and the rest of the original nine in the permanent dwelling. She will continue to give us her wisdom, through the earth we walk on, just as the Gaffer intended.’

  Baran lifts and lowers his shoulders while the Mister speaks. It is not typical for the Mister to make a discourse before a commitment. He is keen to get the body into the hole as quickly as possible, you can tell. As the shiner, it is his job to maintain the dwelling, to make sure that there is room for new commitments. I imagine him descending into the hole and rummaging through the remains to clear space.

  I like this Mister. Lakan is her name. I like that she expresses sentiment. She is young for a Mister, just a few years older than me, her feet not yet under her in the job. The previous Mister, Granielle of the Morovans, had died suddenly, and it was the turn of the Engens. Lakan was of age, just about.

  The Mister stops speaking and turns to Baran, who leaps into urgent action, stepping forward and removing the sheet from the body with a sharp tug. The body is grey, a small sack of bones. My stomach tightens, and I think about my mother.

  The Mister comes to stand beside him. Each puts an arm around the other’s shoulder.

  ‘The earth will have its own,’ says Baran.

  With their free hands, they each grab one of Tana’s wrists. They hoist her up and drag her backwards towards the dark entrance of the dwelling. Once they are at the threshold, they split apart and pull the body between them into the darkness. There is a faint thud as the body lands. Baran closes the door, pushing it with his shoulder through the resisting mud.

  Baran resumes his place beside the Mister for the count. We will stand in silent counting until Baran tells us to stop. It is a way to clear the mind, to allow us to better interpret the advice of our forebears. It is now that our forebears are at their most talkative, with all of us at the dwelling, adding a new member to their number.

  The more pious Mudders always have a count going, but the ritual is no longer widely observed. Another generation or two will probably do away with it. Or maybe it will become more popular than ever. You can never tell with these things.

  I sense a movement high at the edge of my vision. I turn my head to get a look, slightly, not wanting to draw attention to myself. Someone is up there, at the far corner of the Barr hut. The shoulders are stooped, as if they are trying to stay out of sight. But I see the long mantle, the tightly wound tail of hair down their back. I cannot make out the features at this distance, but I get an impression of the white face, smooth and mudless. Like a fish pulled straight from the river. I straighten my neck again and try to resume my count.