Alisaura
Blue Crack Supplier
Behold, more spooky posting from beyond the International Date Line... I did mean to do this earlier today, but it's technically Sunday here now, so here we are. 
Disclaimer ad nauseum: All untrue, don't know the band, never been further into Wales than Cardiff; any errors in between the made-up rubbish are entirely mine.
end of chapter 43:
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Wednesday afternoon saw me leaving the hospital, leaning on Glen's arm. He was carrying my bags over the other shoulder, which he'd collected from the B&B at some point. It was good to be in proper clothes again, and even better to be out of the hospital and outside in the sun. I squinted up at a blue sky dotted with fluffy white clouds. Another idyllic-looking day. I took a deep breath, filling my lungs with the green and growing smells of the Welsh countryside in spring.
I'd told Glen about my plan the previous day. He'd frowned and sighed, but agreed to go along with it. One last thing, I'd told him. Then it would all finally be over for good.
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Chapter 44:
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I hadn't seen Ed again since we'd agreed that Ewain's bones should be moved, and I had no way of contacting him. I was a little apprehensive, when we pulled up next to my car at the bottom of the hill, to see a third car there, a sleek black people-mover with a hire-company sticker in the window. Tourists, or...?
"Ed," Glen muttered, looking up the hill. Sure enough, Ed was descending to meet us. I shot my man a look – he was wearing an expression of grudging acceptance. "Let's get this over with," he said, climbing out of the car. I followed, more slowly.
Ed was carrying a dirty wad of black material in one hand, and as we got closer, I saw it was his beanie. Old habits must die hard, indeed. At least he wasn't wearing it. His eyes almost disappeared into shadowed creases as he squinted against the sun.
"I was hoping you'd come today," he said by way of a greeting, nodding politely to Glen, who nodded back.
"It seemed best to do it as soon as possible," I replied.
"If I'd known I was going to bury something there after all this, I wouldn't have bothered filling in Ewain's hut again," Ed went on, smiling ruefully. "Still, we dug part of it out, yesterday, and we're ready."
"We?" I glanced up, and saw two figures watching us from the hill's summit, outside the ring of stones. One taller and silver-haired, the other shorter and bearded. Adam and Paul, then. Both were wearing dark sunglasses, and holding shovels. It was a curious juxtaposition.
"No Lawrence?"
"He's gone back home, family things to take care of. We all ought to be busy working, really, but a couple more days won't do any harm. He doesn't need to be here, does he?" Ed's eyebrows drew together in concern.
"No, no, it's fine," I said, reassuring him. "No ceremonial bloodletting this time, I promise." I smiled weakly. Glen grunted beside me, clearly unamused.
There was more digging gear in the back of my car, and I gave the 4WD a quick once-over before getting it out. Everything seemed to be present and correct. I found a mushroom on the drivers' side floor, which must have fallen out of my pocket as I was getting out of the car that night. I looked at the fungus for a long moment, then dropped it on the ground, and stepped on it for good measure.
Ed caught me at it, and raised his eyebrows.
"Once is enough," I replied to the unspoken question, and he nodded in understanding.
Climbing the hill (which took rather longer than it had a few days before), I noticed with every step the subtle difference to the feel of the place. The air felt more alive, the ground springier underfoot. Or maybe the spring was in my step, even recovering as I was, buoyed by the lingering sense of completion, wholeness.
Paul and Adam greeted me with smiles as I reached the hilltop; Paul's warm and broad, Adam's upside-down. I smiled back, drawing in deep lungfuls of vibrant Welsh air. Ed and Glen stopped on either side of me, Glen looking about curiously. He'd never been here in daylight, after all.
"This is so much better," I sighed happily. That uncomfortable, skin-tingling tension in the atmosphere had evaporated – almost.
"I was here quite early," Ed said, and his smile stretched into a grin. "There was dew inside the stones."
I couldn't help but grin as well. "There was? That's wonderful. It really made a difference, then..."
"Of course it did." Ed turned to face me, serious again.
"Excuse me," Glen said, with an air of exaggerated patience. "Dew?"
"I was wondering the same thing," Adam drawled.
Ed opened his mouth to explain, then changed his mind. "I'll tell you later," he said to Adam.
Paul's eyes were roving over the grass, and I had the feeling he'd figured it out already.
"I'll remind you later, too," I told Glen, who just grunted again.
The five of us entered the circle, and my eyes were drawn from the broken Fire-stone, to the blackened patch of earth where the fire had been, to the altar stone. The others stopped as I walked over and stared down at it. After a moment, I felt Glen at my side, and our hands found one another.
The rain had washed most of my blood away, carrying it to soak into the ground, but I could still see rusty brown flecks on the grainy surface of the stone, and here and there in the surrounding grass. My heart pounded in my chest at the memories that rose up – my own memories, this time. Glen squeezed my hand, and we turned away.
As we did so, I saw Mag's knife lying in the grass. Bits of my dried blood were still visible on the blade's edge. I bent, picked it up, and turned it over in my hands. I ran a finger over the smoothly rippled stone, keeping it away from the sharp edges.
Glen was watching me. Self-conscious, I dropped the flint knife into my jacket pocket.
The others had gathered around the burned ground where the fire had been, and under which, according to Ed, Ewain's bones were lying. Glen and I joined them, and everyone exchanged looks.
"This guy Ewain... his body is under there?" Glen asked, a guarded and sceptical expression on his face as he eyed Ed.
Ed nodded. "His bones, yes."
"And you know this because...?"
"Because I know," Ed asserted in his quiet voice.
"I can check the geophys, if you like," I put in, restraining an urge to roll my eyes. "There's a copy of the scans in my car."
Paul glanced towards the slope of the hill, and the cars below. "It would almost be quicker to just dig, and see what's there," he said, a small smile playing about his whiskery jaw.
"Let's do that, shall we?" I suggested. I tried my best to keep my tone neutral.
Glen shot me a look. "You're not digging anything up," he told me. His eyes drifted to my arms, where thin bandages were still in place, under the sleeves of my light jacket.
"No, that wouldn't be wise," Adam agreed.
"You just take it easy, Lisa, and watch us do all the work." Paul said, and handed a shovel to Glen, who took it automatically, then hesitated. He looked at me, and I looked back.
"Come on now... Glen, isn't it? Don't tell me you've never dug a hole before..." Paul herded my man back to where Adam and Ed were already digging. The ground seemed much harder there than it had been at the site of the old village; baked solid and burned black by the fire.
Soon I was sitting on the ground, beside the altar stone, watching them dig. Paul was doing most of the talking, with interjections from Ed and Adam. I heard Glen laugh, and I smiled. Paul was defrosting him expertly, turning on the charm... in fact, looking at him, I wasn't sure he ever turned it off.
My attention on the hole they were digging sharpened, just as an abrupt silence fell on the four men. They turned in unison to look at me, and I stood up to join them. We all looked down into the shallow hole in the blackened, gritty soil; and at the bones that, while also stained dark by the ash, were visible now. A long bone, the ends of ribs...
I looked up; Ed had gone white, his face set.
They resumed the excavation, more carefully, and in silence now. When someone's shovel scraped dully, making a pale mark on the unmistakable curve of a skull, Ed turned quickly and walked away, his gait jerky and agitated. His shovel dropped from seemingly nerveless fingers.
Paul and Adam exchanged a look, before Paul put his shovel down too, and followed. The shorter man put an arm around Ed's hunched shoulders, and leaned close, their heads together. Ed began shaking his head.
"I can't..." I heard him say.
"Shall we continue?" Adam said, pulling our attention away from the tableau.
He and Glen gradually revealed the rest of Ewain's skeleton as I looked on, using geology picks when the shovels became too clumsy for the job. It wasn't deeply buried, this being a hilltop after all; the hole was only a foot or two deep. The skeleton seemed to be intact, and was drawn up in almost a foetal position. The skull was thrown back, though, the lower jaw bone gaping open. I knew that bodies could and did shift position after death, especially if they were burned, but it looked too much as if Ewain had died screaming, in terrible pain.
As, indeed, he must have.
My skin crawled, and I wondered if I was imagining the frustrated malice that seemed to emanate from the grave.
"What now?" Glen asked.
I tore my eyes off the remains. Adam was looking across, outside the circle, to where Ed and Paul were returning up the hill. They must have gone down to the cars... Ed was carrying a hessian sack in one hand. I intercepted them before they reached the stones.
"Are you all right?" I asked Ed. He was still pale, his mouth drawn into a barely-visible line between the whiskers. "You don't need to see it... him, if you don't want to."
He shook his head again. "No, I want to. Well, I feel that I should, anyway." He rubbed his free hand over the close-cropped hair at the back of his head. "Closure and all that, you know." A very small smile.
I gestured at the sack. "Is that for him?"
"Yes. I know it's not much, but I don't think any of us came prepared to re-bury someone's bones."
"It's better than nothing," I nodded. I didn't relish the prospect of carrying those bones back to the old village in our bare hands.
Ed took a deep breath, and went back to the excavation. Paul and I followed, but hung back as Ed looked down on Ewain's bones.
"I think I'm glad Mag's remains were scattered," I said under my breath. Paul glanced at me, but I couldn't guess at his expression behind the sunglasses.
A long moment passed, and Ed didn't move. Finally, I stepped up beside him, and saw that his eyes were squeezed shut, a sheen of perspiration on his forehead.
"Ed?"
I put an hand on his shoulder, and he started. Blinked, drew a ragged breath, and turned quickly away. He shook his head as if clearing it. We moved away, and Ed paced back and forth near the Air-stone.
"Maybe that was a bad idea," I said, concerned.
Ed shook his head again, but his voice was far from certain. "I just... I don't know. It all came back. I'm not touching them," he said. Then he stopped, and looked at me. "I don't think you should, either."
"I won't argue with that," I said.
So, Adam, Paul and Glen finished the process of transferring Ewain's mortal remains from the hilltop to the hessian bag.
"It doesn't seem quite right, just dumping someone's bones into a bag," Glen said as we were walking along the valley towards the old village. After a long, uncomfortable silence, Adam had finally volunteered to carry the sack. He held it out to one side, his usually imperturbable demeanour slightly disrupted. I didn't blame him at all.
"It's less right to leave him up there," Ed said, with some vehemence. "He doesn't belong there, he never did. And we can't take the chance that those bones might eventually undo everything. Again."
Glen was wearing his favourite sceptical frown again, but said nothing.
As we walked, Glen drifted over to Adam, and the two exchanged quiet words. Ed seemed to want some space and led the way, solitary, hands jammed into pockets. I found myself walking beside Paul, bringing up the rear.
His hair still looked as if he'd just woken up, I noted absently. In the sunlight, I saw that it was reddish brown, with a smattering of grey hairs. The straggly beard was the same. As far as I could tell, his eyes were on Ed, and traces of a worried frown showed above the dark glasses.
"You've known each other a long time?" I asked.
"Hmm?" Paul looked up, processed the question. "Yeah, a long time. We all met in school."
"Wow. All four of you? That's quite a while, all right."
"Some days it feels like longer than others," he said with a dry chuckle.
"You must be very close, to come out here, to go along with all this. I couldn't believe it..."
That chuckle again. "After everything that's happened here, you can't believe that?"
I had to smile. "When you put it like that..."
"We've been through a lot together," Paul continued in his soft accent, more serious now. "We leave each other alone when we need to," he glanced again at Ed, striding ahead of us, "and we stick together when we need to. We don't let anyone fall so far down that we can't drag them back again."
"He's lucky to have friends like you," I said, impressed. It sounded like a rare thing they had.
"We're all lucky," he agreed.
I peered at him for a moment, struck again by that sense of familiarity. But I was interrupted before I could decide if I wanted to figure it out or not.
"Here," came Ed's voice, and I looked up. We'd reached the site of the village, and I saw the places where Ed and I had each excavated Ewain and Mag's respective huts. The five of us gathered around the hole that Ed and the others had dug earlier, down to Ewain's hut. Ed was pointedly not looking at the sack Adam had rested on the ground at his feet. There was a silence.
"Well...?" I began.
"Go ahead," Ed told Adam, without quite looking at him.
Adam cast a slightly helpless glance at the rest of us, shrugged, and gently lowered the sack of bones into the ground. It thumped dully against the blackened earth.
Another silence.
"Is that it?" Glen asked. "Shouldn't someone say something?"
"There's nothing to say," Ed said shortly, his eyes touching the hessian sack for the briefest of moments before skidding away.
"He did some horrible things, he was a twisted soul," I said. "He was broken... but before that... Before that, I believe he had been a good man, a good father and a mate." I looked at Ed, daring him to deny it.
Ed, for his part, sighed heavily. "Before they were killed, yes, he was good to his family. He did everything for them, even the worst things. For them."
"The hands that build, can also pull down," Paul mused.
That pretty much seemed to sum it up, I thought. There were collective nods of agreement.
After a moment, Ed drew the obsidian knife from his pocket, and turned it over in his hands. One final glance at the bag of bones, and he tossed the blade into the hole, the sun flashing from its glossy surface as it fell. Then Ed turned, and began to fill in the grave with a shovel he'd carried from the hilltop. After another moment, Paul and Adam joined him.
Glen and I stood a short distance away, watching.
"Well, that's that," Glen said, clasping my hand.
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(It's not done just yet, despite what Glen keeps thinking. )
Disclaimer ad nauseum: All untrue, don't know the band, never been further into Wales than Cardiff; any errors in between the made-up rubbish are entirely mine.
end of chapter 43:
--------
Wednesday afternoon saw me leaving the hospital, leaning on Glen's arm. He was carrying my bags over the other shoulder, which he'd collected from the B&B at some point. It was good to be in proper clothes again, and even better to be out of the hospital and outside in the sun. I squinted up at a blue sky dotted with fluffy white clouds. Another idyllic-looking day. I took a deep breath, filling my lungs with the green and growing smells of the Welsh countryside in spring.
I'd told Glen about my plan the previous day. He'd frowned and sighed, but agreed to go along with it. One last thing, I'd told him. Then it would all finally be over for good.
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Chapter 44:
-----------
I hadn't seen Ed again since we'd agreed that Ewain's bones should be moved, and I had no way of contacting him. I was a little apprehensive, when we pulled up next to my car at the bottom of the hill, to see a third car there, a sleek black people-mover with a hire-company sticker in the window. Tourists, or...?
"Ed," Glen muttered, looking up the hill. Sure enough, Ed was descending to meet us. I shot my man a look – he was wearing an expression of grudging acceptance. "Let's get this over with," he said, climbing out of the car. I followed, more slowly.
Ed was carrying a dirty wad of black material in one hand, and as we got closer, I saw it was his beanie. Old habits must die hard, indeed. At least he wasn't wearing it. His eyes almost disappeared into shadowed creases as he squinted against the sun.
"I was hoping you'd come today," he said by way of a greeting, nodding politely to Glen, who nodded back.
"It seemed best to do it as soon as possible," I replied.
"If I'd known I was going to bury something there after all this, I wouldn't have bothered filling in Ewain's hut again," Ed went on, smiling ruefully. "Still, we dug part of it out, yesterday, and we're ready."
"We?" I glanced up, and saw two figures watching us from the hill's summit, outside the ring of stones. One taller and silver-haired, the other shorter and bearded. Adam and Paul, then. Both were wearing dark sunglasses, and holding shovels. It was a curious juxtaposition.
"No Lawrence?"
"He's gone back home, family things to take care of. We all ought to be busy working, really, but a couple more days won't do any harm. He doesn't need to be here, does he?" Ed's eyebrows drew together in concern.
"No, no, it's fine," I said, reassuring him. "No ceremonial bloodletting this time, I promise." I smiled weakly. Glen grunted beside me, clearly unamused.
There was more digging gear in the back of my car, and I gave the 4WD a quick once-over before getting it out. Everything seemed to be present and correct. I found a mushroom on the drivers' side floor, which must have fallen out of my pocket as I was getting out of the car that night. I looked at the fungus for a long moment, then dropped it on the ground, and stepped on it for good measure.
Ed caught me at it, and raised his eyebrows.
"Once is enough," I replied to the unspoken question, and he nodded in understanding.
Climbing the hill (which took rather longer than it had a few days before), I noticed with every step the subtle difference to the feel of the place. The air felt more alive, the ground springier underfoot. Or maybe the spring was in my step, even recovering as I was, buoyed by the lingering sense of completion, wholeness.
Paul and Adam greeted me with smiles as I reached the hilltop; Paul's warm and broad, Adam's upside-down. I smiled back, drawing in deep lungfuls of vibrant Welsh air. Ed and Glen stopped on either side of me, Glen looking about curiously. He'd never been here in daylight, after all.
"This is so much better," I sighed happily. That uncomfortable, skin-tingling tension in the atmosphere had evaporated – almost.
"I was here quite early," Ed said, and his smile stretched into a grin. "There was dew inside the stones."
I couldn't help but grin as well. "There was? That's wonderful. It really made a difference, then..."
"Of course it did." Ed turned to face me, serious again.
"Excuse me," Glen said, with an air of exaggerated patience. "Dew?"
"I was wondering the same thing," Adam drawled.
Ed opened his mouth to explain, then changed his mind. "I'll tell you later," he said to Adam.
Paul's eyes were roving over the grass, and I had the feeling he'd figured it out already.
"I'll remind you later, too," I told Glen, who just grunted again.
The five of us entered the circle, and my eyes were drawn from the broken Fire-stone, to the blackened patch of earth where the fire had been, to the altar stone. The others stopped as I walked over and stared down at it. After a moment, I felt Glen at my side, and our hands found one another.
The rain had washed most of my blood away, carrying it to soak into the ground, but I could still see rusty brown flecks on the grainy surface of the stone, and here and there in the surrounding grass. My heart pounded in my chest at the memories that rose up – my own memories, this time. Glen squeezed my hand, and we turned away.
As we did so, I saw Mag's knife lying in the grass. Bits of my dried blood were still visible on the blade's edge. I bent, picked it up, and turned it over in my hands. I ran a finger over the smoothly rippled stone, keeping it away from the sharp edges.
Glen was watching me. Self-conscious, I dropped the flint knife into my jacket pocket.
The others had gathered around the burned ground where the fire had been, and under which, according to Ed, Ewain's bones were lying. Glen and I joined them, and everyone exchanged looks.
"This guy Ewain... his body is under there?" Glen asked, a guarded and sceptical expression on his face as he eyed Ed.
Ed nodded. "His bones, yes."
"And you know this because...?"
"Because I know," Ed asserted in his quiet voice.
"I can check the geophys, if you like," I put in, restraining an urge to roll my eyes. "There's a copy of the scans in my car."
Paul glanced towards the slope of the hill, and the cars below. "It would almost be quicker to just dig, and see what's there," he said, a small smile playing about his whiskery jaw.
"Let's do that, shall we?" I suggested. I tried my best to keep my tone neutral.
Glen shot me a look. "You're not digging anything up," he told me. His eyes drifted to my arms, where thin bandages were still in place, under the sleeves of my light jacket.
"No, that wouldn't be wise," Adam agreed.
"You just take it easy, Lisa, and watch us do all the work." Paul said, and handed a shovel to Glen, who took it automatically, then hesitated. He looked at me, and I looked back.
"Come on now... Glen, isn't it? Don't tell me you've never dug a hole before..." Paul herded my man back to where Adam and Ed were already digging. The ground seemed much harder there than it had been at the site of the old village; baked solid and burned black by the fire.
Soon I was sitting on the ground, beside the altar stone, watching them dig. Paul was doing most of the talking, with interjections from Ed and Adam. I heard Glen laugh, and I smiled. Paul was defrosting him expertly, turning on the charm... in fact, looking at him, I wasn't sure he ever turned it off.
My attention on the hole they were digging sharpened, just as an abrupt silence fell on the four men. They turned in unison to look at me, and I stood up to join them. We all looked down into the shallow hole in the blackened, gritty soil; and at the bones that, while also stained dark by the ash, were visible now. A long bone, the ends of ribs...
I looked up; Ed had gone white, his face set.
They resumed the excavation, more carefully, and in silence now. When someone's shovel scraped dully, making a pale mark on the unmistakable curve of a skull, Ed turned quickly and walked away, his gait jerky and agitated. His shovel dropped from seemingly nerveless fingers.
Paul and Adam exchanged a look, before Paul put his shovel down too, and followed. The shorter man put an arm around Ed's hunched shoulders, and leaned close, their heads together. Ed began shaking his head.
"I can't..." I heard him say.
"Shall we continue?" Adam said, pulling our attention away from the tableau.
He and Glen gradually revealed the rest of Ewain's skeleton as I looked on, using geology picks when the shovels became too clumsy for the job. It wasn't deeply buried, this being a hilltop after all; the hole was only a foot or two deep. The skeleton seemed to be intact, and was drawn up in almost a foetal position. The skull was thrown back, though, the lower jaw bone gaping open. I knew that bodies could and did shift position after death, especially if they were burned, but it looked too much as if Ewain had died screaming, in terrible pain.
As, indeed, he must have.
My skin crawled, and I wondered if I was imagining the frustrated malice that seemed to emanate from the grave.
"What now?" Glen asked.
I tore my eyes off the remains. Adam was looking across, outside the circle, to where Ed and Paul were returning up the hill. They must have gone down to the cars... Ed was carrying a hessian sack in one hand. I intercepted them before they reached the stones.
"Are you all right?" I asked Ed. He was still pale, his mouth drawn into a barely-visible line between the whiskers. "You don't need to see it... him, if you don't want to."
He shook his head again. "No, I want to. Well, I feel that I should, anyway." He rubbed his free hand over the close-cropped hair at the back of his head. "Closure and all that, you know." A very small smile.
I gestured at the sack. "Is that for him?"
"Yes. I know it's not much, but I don't think any of us came prepared to re-bury someone's bones."
"It's better than nothing," I nodded. I didn't relish the prospect of carrying those bones back to the old village in our bare hands.
Ed took a deep breath, and went back to the excavation. Paul and I followed, but hung back as Ed looked down on Ewain's bones.
"I think I'm glad Mag's remains were scattered," I said under my breath. Paul glanced at me, but I couldn't guess at his expression behind the sunglasses.
A long moment passed, and Ed didn't move. Finally, I stepped up beside him, and saw that his eyes were squeezed shut, a sheen of perspiration on his forehead.
"Ed?"
I put an hand on his shoulder, and he started. Blinked, drew a ragged breath, and turned quickly away. He shook his head as if clearing it. We moved away, and Ed paced back and forth near the Air-stone.
"Maybe that was a bad idea," I said, concerned.
Ed shook his head again, but his voice was far from certain. "I just... I don't know. It all came back. I'm not touching them," he said. Then he stopped, and looked at me. "I don't think you should, either."
"I won't argue with that," I said.
So, Adam, Paul and Glen finished the process of transferring Ewain's mortal remains from the hilltop to the hessian bag.
"It doesn't seem quite right, just dumping someone's bones into a bag," Glen said as we were walking along the valley towards the old village. After a long, uncomfortable silence, Adam had finally volunteered to carry the sack. He held it out to one side, his usually imperturbable demeanour slightly disrupted. I didn't blame him at all.
"It's less right to leave him up there," Ed said, with some vehemence. "He doesn't belong there, he never did. And we can't take the chance that those bones might eventually undo everything. Again."
Glen was wearing his favourite sceptical frown again, but said nothing.
As we walked, Glen drifted over to Adam, and the two exchanged quiet words. Ed seemed to want some space and led the way, solitary, hands jammed into pockets. I found myself walking beside Paul, bringing up the rear.
His hair still looked as if he'd just woken up, I noted absently. In the sunlight, I saw that it was reddish brown, with a smattering of grey hairs. The straggly beard was the same. As far as I could tell, his eyes were on Ed, and traces of a worried frown showed above the dark glasses.
"You've known each other a long time?" I asked.
"Hmm?" Paul looked up, processed the question. "Yeah, a long time. We all met in school."
"Wow. All four of you? That's quite a while, all right."
"Some days it feels like longer than others," he said with a dry chuckle.
"You must be very close, to come out here, to go along with all this. I couldn't believe it..."
That chuckle again. "After everything that's happened here, you can't believe that?"
I had to smile. "When you put it like that..."
"We've been through a lot together," Paul continued in his soft accent, more serious now. "We leave each other alone when we need to," he glanced again at Ed, striding ahead of us, "and we stick together when we need to. We don't let anyone fall so far down that we can't drag them back again."
"He's lucky to have friends like you," I said, impressed. It sounded like a rare thing they had.
"We're all lucky," he agreed.
I peered at him for a moment, struck again by that sense of familiarity. But I was interrupted before I could decide if I wanted to figure it out or not.
"Here," came Ed's voice, and I looked up. We'd reached the site of the village, and I saw the places where Ed and I had each excavated Ewain and Mag's respective huts. The five of us gathered around the hole that Ed and the others had dug earlier, down to Ewain's hut. Ed was pointedly not looking at the sack Adam had rested on the ground at his feet. There was a silence.
"Well...?" I began.
"Go ahead," Ed told Adam, without quite looking at him.
Adam cast a slightly helpless glance at the rest of us, shrugged, and gently lowered the sack of bones into the ground. It thumped dully against the blackened earth.
Another silence.
"Is that it?" Glen asked. "Shouldn't someone say something?"
"There's nothing to say," Ed said shortly, his eyes touching the hessian sack for the briefest of moments before skidding away.
"He did some horrible things, he was a twisted soul," I said. "He was broken... but before that... Before that, I believe he had been a good man, a good father and a mate." I looked at Ed, daring him to deny it.
Ed, for his part, sighed heavily. "Before they were killed, yes, he was good to his family. He did everything for them, even the worst things. For them."
"The hands that build, can also pull down," Paul mused.
That pretty much seemed to sum it up, I thought. There were collective nods of agreement.
After a moment, Ed drew the obsidian knife from his pocket, and turned it over in his hands. One final glance at the bag of bones, and he tossed the blade into the hole, the sun flashing from its glossy surface as it fell. Then Ed turned, and began to fill in the grave with a shovel he'd carried from the hilltop. After another moment, Paul and Adam joined him.
Glen and I stood a short distance away, watching.
"Well, that's that," Glen said, clasping my hand.
---------------
(It's not done just yet, despite what Glen keeps thinking.
)
Hi Ali. This has been a really good fic. I've enjoyed reading it; the way you've written it. It's always just flowed like a river. And it's great as usual. 
great chapter i will be sad to see it finished.
