She shrugs against me. “You didn’t need to see her like that again.”

Esther is kneeling beside Nelline. I wait for her scream, her questions, but she only goes rigid for a second. Then she takes Nelline’s shoulders and lifts her, pulling at the simple gown to see down her back. After a moment I realize she’s checking the tattoo. Whatever she sees must satisfy her, because she shakes her head and lays the body back down.

“It’s not me,” I say.

“I know. She has tattoos, but they’re different from yours,” Esther says.

Dell doesn’t say anything, but her gaze shifts to my back like she can see the mark that’s there through my clothes.

Esther is touching Nelline’s face. “Is she from another world?”

“Yes. The journey back…it killed her.”

“Does that happen often?”

I swallow. “It’s happened before.”

She looks at me for a long moment before nodding, and I feel like I’ve answered an entirely different question.

“I’ll need her name. Her real name,” she says.

“Nelline,” I say.

Esther turns from us. She is gentle as she pulls the limbs out of the shroud and tucks the material beneath the body. She cuts a finger’s worth of Nelline’s hair and puts it into a jar, then grabs a handful of the dark sand and pours it over the strands.

    She takes out a small vial of oil and pours it on the ground to make a paste, then uses the paste to make a cross on Nelline’s forehead.

She’s ready to begin.

Esther sits with her legs crossed. She closes her eyes and bends forward, her face by Nelline’s. She will sit like this, taking deep but measured breaths, until she has finished whispering the first prayer into Nelline’s ear. We are not allowed to hear. No one living is allowed to know it, only the practitioner and the dead. The superstitious believe that if you can make out the words, your time is soon coming. Most people look away so they don’t risk even interpreting the shape of the words.

Oddly, though I’m not the one meditating, a calm comes over me, a spell woven by the warm heat and my sister’s barely audible prayer. The minutes of inactivity should pass like an eternity, but when she finally straightens and opens her eyes, it’s too soon.

“So let it be done,” she says, and the first part of the funeral has finished.

Next, Esther lights a cigar and sets it aside. Using her fingers, she draws a symbol in the sand that looks like a big cross, with little crosses filling in the four sections around it. Lastly, she draws an awkward number seven over it all.

She sees me watching. “To open the gate,” she says.

I should reply I know or Of course, but I’m tired of lying so I just nod.

She closes her eyes, letting the smoke from the cigar waft around her and Nelline. I don’t know how long she waits, or what she is waiting for, but suddenly she opens her eyes. The door must be open, because she repeats the ritual, only this time drawing a different symbol on her left side. This one looks like an outlined cross filled in with stars, with coffins on either side.

Esther takes from her pack another bottle that smells identifiably alcoholic and pours it over each symbol, making a puddle. Then she reaches for the cigar, which has by now burnt down enough that she can add a little ash to each side too.

    She closes her eyes to wait for the second symbol’s work. I don’t know how she senses it, but she opens her eyes at the exact moment the cigar stops burning.

Esther stands, and the second part is finished.

Now it is the final part. The only portion of the funeral I’ve ever been able to see from my usual position in the back of the crowd. This is the long prayer. We have to witness and repeat it to send Nelline on her way. It doesn’t seem like there are enough of us to help her make the journey, so I’m glad when Mr. Cheeks steps closer to join in.

Like all things with the death ritual, the prayer is broken into three parts.

Esther stands and faces the sky, because the first part is not being spoken to us or Nelline, but some great beyond.

“Holy host above, I call as your servant, sanctify our actions this day. Receive this child into your arms that she might pass in safety from this crisis. Forgive our living and our dead, those present and those absent, our young and our old. Whomever you keep alive, keep him alive in you, and whomever you cause to die, cause him to die with hope. Wash her with dirt and ash and oil and mercy. Give her a home better than her home and a family better than her family. Admit her to the city, where living beings have no pains, but receive only pleasure. Where the rain always comes, and the sun is kind. Where swans, peacocks, and parrots sing.

“Make her grave spacious and fill it with light.”

We repeat the last line three times. Dell and I move forward to the body. Next we will send Nelline away, so this is our last chance to give her a message. I kneel down first. I hadn’t intended to give a secret for the dead to carry, but when I get close the whisper comes out of me.

“I’m so sorry, Nelline. Tell Caramenta I’m sorry about her too. And tell her I wish it was me. Every time it happens, I wish it was me.”

I move and Dell leans forward. I’m surprised she has a message for Nelline, or some other dead, but she stays beside the body longer than I do. When she’s done, we each grab a strap on the bag and carry her body to the bog. We slide her off of the bag and for a moment she floats on top of the viscous liquid. But then, slowly, Nelline begins to sink.

    Esther turns her back to us, and says the second part of the prayer to the dead.

“Nelline, I am commending you into the arms of the earth, the preserver of all mercy. I am returning you to everlasting peace, and to the denser reality of the creator of all. Don’t be scared. Don’t regret. Whatever time you had, it was enough. Whatever you accomplished, it was enough. We will remember your good deeds for the rest of our lives. We will forget your wrongdoings forever. Thank you, thank you, thank you, for spending your time in the dirt with us.”

We wait for the bog to consume her. It is quicker than waiting for the body to be shoveled in like an earth burial, but it is much, much quieter. I can’t keep the words from the send-off from repeating in my head. Don’t be scared. Was she scared? Of course she was. She had no training in traversing. She didn’t understand what was happening, why she had to die for following me. She must have been terrified. But was she scared anymore? Did she feel anything? Did she have enough consciousness to find her way back to peace? Or was that terror in the dark the last thing she would ever know, for all eternity?

Esther doesn’t turn back to us until the body is submerged. The final part of the prayer is for our benefit. Nelline is gone.

“The phenomenon of death is just the separation of the astral body from the physical body. It is the five elements of the body returning to their source. In the divine plan, every union must end with separation. Whether it was now, twenty years ago, or twenty years in the future, you were always going to lose her. We are pilgrims at an inn. When we leave is immaterial, because we are only meant to leave.”

There is comfort in the inevitability. It makes my part in her story unremarkable. I didn’t change her fate; I don’t have that power. My presence just changed her timing. We were always going to separate. We must always separate. Time is a flat thing and we are always separating. When we are together we are already gone.

“I take refuge in the dirt. I take refuge in the ash. I take refuge in the oil.”

We chant the affirmations three times.

“I go to the dirt for refuge. I go to the ash for refuge. I go to the oil for refuge.”

    When we finish, Esther says “So let it be done” for the last time, and then it is.

* * *

MR. CHEEKS HELPS Esther build a small fire as we wait for the sun to go down. Only once it is no longer visible in the sky can we leave without a guilty conscience. Leaving in the light means you don’t really care if the dead find their way. Only the truly arrogant arrange morning funerals, putting that much faith in the devotion of their loved ones and that little stock in the strength of the Ashtown sun.

Dell’s cheeks and ears are turning the telling pink of an outsider, and she goes to wait in the runner’s vehicle before it can graduate to a full burn. When only half the sun is still visible Esther finishes at the fire and brings me the mourning candle. It looks like oil, but it’s just wax that hasn’t cooled yet. Inside will be the lock of hair that Esther took, and dark sand from the place beside Nelline’s grave.

“I don’t need that,” I say when she offers it. “We weren’t that close.”

She looks at me square, a sign I’ve entered into an argument I won’t win. “You are as close to her as anyone ever can be. You are her,” she says, and shoves the still-warm jar into my hands.