Wherein weariness takes its toll (Ch. 20)
“There was a great cry from the great father of the spruce trees. All his children wept as they saw the father felled, and Kayatta could not nothing about it. Rage and sorrow filled him. He raged at his friends and clan, who’d done the foul deed. He raged at the gods of winter, who’d forced them into so foul a crime. He raged at the fires of war, for all the lives they’d taken. He raged at the spirits of trickery, for planting the vile seed of the scheme in his mind. He raged at the weakness of his soul, that he’d so fallen into the spirits’ plan, and had shared their plot with the clan. And he wept for the saplings and for the children yet born, who’d never know the great father of the spruce trees. But in the end he felt sorrow for the great father himself. And though he hated himself for it, he felt too a touch of relief, that for their great crime, his ember siblings would live to see another spring” Excerpt from ‘The princes of the west wood’, Jennept’s archive of northern s