It was a pretty sort of day, Mazelton decided. Dawn came on in all its shades from indigo up to pink and then the aching icy blue that you only got far enough north. It was going to be a hot one. The good news was that they were going to be enjoying the cool breeze off the lake the whole day. The bad news was that they would be enjoying the humidity off the lake all day. When the breeze blew, it was idyllic. When it didn’t, it was hellish. But either way, it was very pretty to look at.

Mazelton had taken out his emotions for a bit of a looking over. He could recognize the emotional tiredness for what it was. It had been a long, long time since he felt like he had a home, and an even longer time since he felt “safe.” If he was being strictly honest, he didn’t know that he had ever felt really safe back at the clan house. Yes, his parent’s lovers were lovely people who did their best for him, and he did have some good friends inside and outside of the clan but ultimately? He was a weed growing between the cobblestones. He was constantly crushed, but still struggling on.

He was surprised at how guilty he felt about not burying his parents. It seemed like it was one last, colossal, failure and disappointment on his part. Ma funerals were short, very short, and he couldn’t even manage that? Even with all the time he had convalescing back in South Bay or over the winter in Sky’s Echo? Pathetic.

No, I couldn’t have. He wanted to tell them that. It would all have been too much. Just… too much. Facing the fact that I will never have your respect. Never have your approval. Never have your affection. I will always, so long as I live, be living proof that my parents never got to live and love as they wished. That as far as the Clan was concerned, my existence was more important than their happiness, because I am the next generation. And they were already picking out my marriage partner too. Because my happiness was much less important than bringing in the next generation.

Pathetic and weak willed. He could hear them. Disgusting. Get out.

He tried to pull out of his own head. It was too nice a day to torture himself. He tried, but it was really hard to make himself believe that. He decided to put down duck carving for a while.

Lunch found them a little ways inland from the lake, in an interesting bit of geography where two long valleys intersected a little ways before the lake, making a nice wide bit of wonderfully green, fertile land. It would take a century or two more to really get the soil going, but he could see traces of survey teams having been through. No canton here. Yet.

Mazelton reviewed his wood stock, trying to find something that would carve well but would also fit his mood. Eventually he settled on a largish piece of cedar and a similar sized bit of balsam fir. He thought he would carve his parents.

Before he could even lift his pen to sketch, he realized that he had forgotten their faces.

He knew what they looked like, of course he knew what they looked like! How could he forget his parents! But the more he tried to focus on the details of their faces, the more those faces blurred away. The shape of his father’s ears or his mother’s eyes… were lost to him. His father had a pretty dramatic scar on the back of his left hand, he remembered that well. He had those long, wiry fingers that should have seen him soar as a polisher. Mother’s fingers were much the same, though she never amounted to much as a polisher. She put them to use by flicking the beads of an abacus.

He could remember the shape of their shoulders, the set of their hips, but he could not remember their faces. It occurred to him with quiet horror that he had probably not really looked at his parents in years. He had looked at them, but he hadn’t seen them. He had seen the anger, the disappointment, the revulsion. He had seen eyes narrow, but not the shape of them. Lips turn down, but not the curve of the mouth. He could trace every vein in their hands, because he had watched them clench in anger, over and over again.

With a long sniff, he gave up trying to carve his parents as they were, and started carving how they made him feel. Other than routine core polishing, and the odd work on a duck, it was his main occupation for the day, and the next three days after.

It was an easy trail, close to various lakes, making a long, lazy turn up north, then west and south again all to avoid an inconveniently placed mountain. On the west side of the mountain, things took a bit of an odd turn. The trail ran parallel to a perfectly respectable river, actuall a downright large one. It ran back up to the lakes they had spent days rolling past, connecting a vast riverway to link various cantons and spreading life bringing water to the new lands. Same as every other damn river around there, nothing too remarkable about it, but the mountains were behaving oddly. The mountains should be much greener, Mazelton felt, but they were inexplicably turning almost desert brown and yellow. The slopes were drying out around the river basin, and for the life of him, he couldn’t think why.

Mazelton knew they were a long day’s march from the next Canton, and as cantons in the new territory went, this one was a doozy. It sat at a natural fork in two big rivers. The Dusties slapped a Canton down so fast they probably looked like a blur. Too many eyes around when he got there. Mazelton knew that tonight was the best night to put his plan into action.

He assembled the best people he could find for the job. Only. He assembled the only people he could trust to do the job and keep their mouths shut.

He looked around at Duane, Polyclitus and Lettie. “I want to hire you for a job. It takes about twenty minutes, travel time included, and you only have to do one small thing each. You also have to keep your mouths shut about it both before and after the job.”

“Well that sounds ominous.” Polyclitus grinned humorlessly. “I am in the caravan trade, and don’t much care to moonlight. What’s the job, anyhow?”

“I want to hire you as professional mourners.”

That got him three bewildered looks.

“What now?”

“I want to pay you to mourn at a funeral. One of you will crack two rocks together, another will throw a torch on a prepared bier, and one of you will bow and lead the ritual prayer. Which is, in this case, one sentence.”

“Bier? Is this a cremation? Who’s getting burned and buried?”

“My parents. And it will be a Ma funeral, and I don’t want to alienate the Dusties. It’s hard enough for me to blend as it is.”

This got him more understanding looks.

“You want to burn their effigies?”

“Yeah, I have been carving them the last few days. I have collected all the necessary ingredients for a… frankly low quality ælfsmoke too. Best I can do under the circumstances, and all that.”

“What’s elf smoke?” Polyclitus looked interested. So did Duane.

“Ælfsmoke. The important thing for you to know about aelfsmoke is that you aren't going to be inhaling any of it. This is a crucial point because if you don’t know what you are doing, or even if you do know what you are doing, the odds are excellent that you will kill or permanently injure yourself. It is vastly more survivable for the Ma, but even we don't screw around with it. Which is why, Lettie, that if you try and grab some of my family's sacrificial ritual medium for research purposes, I will make you inhale the whole damn bottle. Clear?”

“Crystal.”

“Great.”

“Why paid?” Duane asked quietly.

“It’s a Ma thing.” Lettie shrugged.

“The Xia do it too, but for very different reasons. Basically, the Ma clan are all about looking forward. BUT! Funeral rituals are key parts of communal human existence. Something about the end of a life calls out for some kind of observation. So… we adapted. It is the duty of the youngest adult generation to hire professional mourners. To show that the line of those who died lived on, and prospered enough that they could spend resources on something unessential to survival.”

“I guess I get that.” Polyclitus nodded.

“Plus the family members in attendance will be busy dealing with the Ælfflæd. That’s the other, arguably more important part of the ritual. Making sure the dead get away clean.”

This got more boggled looks, though Lettie just looked at him like he was crazy.

Mazelton coughed. “Look, there is no Ma afterlife. No reincarnation. The dead do not, in any meaningful sense, live on. You get one life and that’s that. But we do believe in souls. And we do believe in what most call demons. Extra dimensional beings. That are hungry and will eat souls.” Mazelton paused, trying to explain something that he grew up knowing. “Hungry is not quite right, of course, nor is “eat.” Lets just say they do bad things. Plus our many, many enemies send evil spirits after our souls when we die, so, you know, steps have to be taken.”

Mazelton waived awkwardly. “You hire an expert to make sure that the souls can evaporate into nothing peacefully. You hire the Ælfflæd.”

That got some more quiet reflection, then Duane shrugged and nodded. Lettie quirked her lips and slowly nodded too.

“Sounds weird as hell. Be a shame to miss it. Alright, I’m in.”

“We gather at twilight.”

“Vasha’s forty one hands, what the hell are those?!”

“The effigies. Obviously.”

“They look like monsters. I think that one wants to kill me and the other wants to eat me.”

“Fun fact, Mother did eat at least one human heart that I know of, and I got the impression that there were several more she didn’t mention.”

“And you are, uh, one hundred percent sure they are dead?” Polyclitus cut in, looking mildly worried.

“Yes.”

“If you don’t mind my asking…”

“I really do. I’m sorry, but I really, really do. I saw some fucked up shit that day, Polyclitus. I saw horrors. I killed a person... I killed more than one person. So no, I don’t want to talk about how I know my parents died horrible, brutal deaths.”

They walked in silence the rest of the way to the clearing Mazelton had picked out. He had made a good sized bonfire and loaded it up with tons of tinder so it would burn very fast. He gave the rocks to Duane, handed the torch to Lettie, and taught Polyclitus the ritual prayer. Mazelton laid the sweet smelling statues, with their bulging neck muscles and grasping fingers, on the pyre, then nodded to Duane.

Duane dutifully smacked two heavy rocks together thrice.

“Today we set to rest the souls of two Ma. Their names will fade from memory, but their true legacy lives on. Their line is unbroken, and prospers. Thanks to them, humanity exists for another generation.” He nodded at Lettie, who lit the pyre. It went up with a crackle and a roar, as the pine tar caught and furiously ignited. Soon the effigies started smoking, smelling wonderful and looking demonic.

“The torch is lit and passed to the next generation. We will see you off safely, that none may harm you.” Mazelton raised the bottle with the powdered mushrooms and brandy, pouring heat into it. It ignited, then Mazelton snuffed it out with his hand, brought it to his mouth, and inhaled all the smoke swirling within. He held it for ten long seconds, cleansing himself of the radiation and focusing through the hallucinations.

“Ælfflæd! Accept my sacrifice! Guard my parent’s passage to oblivion!” Mazelton exhaled the smoke, spitting it up and away from the mourners. When it had risen up and away with the smoke from the pyre, he nodded at Polyclitus.

The weathered old man bowed formally to the pyre, and said the traditional words. “Don’t worry, we got the bastards who did this to you.” The rest bowed after him and repeated the prayer.

Thus were the Ma of Old Radler laid to rest.