The Revenants

feathers which are jae, the symbol for the third month, that of wings returning, and die water jug, raha, which is a symbol for life. The jug scratched on the flute was drawn as broken, but Jaera did not notice that. She took up the feathers and the flute and returned to her I hut, silent as the moonlight itself.
Thereafter the stranger bird haunted the village. It sang only in the moonlight, when none might hunt or follow. It may be that none thought of Jaera; it was the habit not to think of her. It may be that all were sure that the Woman Who Talks With Birds came now to express her anger to the people. For whatever reason, Jaera was left alone. The song she made upon the flute was such a song as spirits might sing if trapped forever away from others of their kind, such a song as prisoners might make if prisoners had the voices of birds. It was a song to keep the villagers wakeful and weeping, and it was a song to waken other things and summon them to heal loneliness. It sang during all the moontime of midsummer month, during the moon-time of the month of shearing, during the moontime of leafturn. In the moontime of the month of harvest, the song was answered.
The Speaker heard the answer, huddled close to his wife under the feather-stuffed quilts. Man and wife Widdek heard it, in their separate places, unspeaking. The children heard it and were for once silenced. The Widdek sons and daughters heard it in fear. He whom they called Wizard heard it from his Tower on the Eastern Mountain and ran to his ancient instruments, his mind full of shock and amazement. The Woman Who Talks With Birds heard it, from her hiding place in the still glades, and took up her staff to begin a long deferred and dangerous journey. She, perhaps only she, could have known what creature it was who answered.
Jaera heard it. She went into the night with a gladness which had no words to express it. She was half mad with hunger and loneliness, but her feet did not stumble nor her breath fail as she sped into the moon-shadowed forest. Her music called and was answered, sought and was found. There were in that night certain eyes which found her and certain hands which held her and a certain glory which surrounded her, that night, and for two nights more. On the fourth night there was no music and she lay alone in the hut at the edge of the forest, sleeping in a stillness that was like death.
When the dark of the moon came, the Speaker waited for any sound which he and his men might follow, but there was none. Nor was that song of the stranger bird heard in the month of first snow. Now, at long last, the Speaker reminded himself of Jaera and told some of the boys to watch her as once they had watched the house of the Woman Who Talks With Birds. They went, and watched, and returned to say that she went about her daily work, gathered wood, milked her goat, spun yarn, sat at the loom. They said that she had made a strange garment for herself which wrapped her and hooded her. The Speaker asked if it was true that her hair was the colour of copper. The boys said they had not seen her hair.
Winter came. If wife Widdek noted from time to time that some hay was missing from the stack, or that some meat which had been hung on the doorpost was gone, well – she said nothing. At midwinter festival there was much making and giving of gifts, and if some warm cloth and wool-lined boots should happen to have been left in a fence corner by accident, it may have been that a dog dragged them away.
Wolf month passed, and the month of thaw (though it did not thaw) and the month of wings returning came. The thaw and the wild geese came together, and with these messengers of spring came a messenger over the pass through the Western Mountains which none but the Keepers ever used. He obeyed to a nicety all the laws of Separation, sounding his wooden clapper to attract attention, placing his message box on a stone, retreating up the pass. The Speaker came to the message point, read the document in the box, signed it with his name. As the Speaker returned to the village, the messenger took up his box and went away as he had come. The message was not complex. During die summer, the Keepers of the Seals of Separation would come to the valley to Seal the new generation.
The Speaker was not Speaker by accident. He thought first of Jaera and then dismissed that thought. The Deputy Observer was dead. The Widdeks would say and do as he bid them say and do. That matter would be a thing unto itself, but all else must be pure to the thousandth part if that matter were to be kept a thing unto itself. The Speaker set about putting the village in order.
All men, women and children born since the Keepers had last come to the valley were summoned to the house of the Speaker two or three at a time. The birthers came, also, and several twice Sealed old men who were trustworthy. The young men and women were stripped and their bodies carefully scrutinized for deviation. The roots of their hair and their teeth were examined. One baby with a large pale birthmark on its buttocks was ordered smothered. The mother wept, and the Speaker was forced to give her the choice of silence or a whipping in the square. She chose to be silent.
The Gate of Separation at the edge of the village on the Western path was taken down, rebuilt and painted. The Signs of Separation were