"Walk to find the walkers", I remember hearing as a yearly refrain as a child. Our own little clan not having sufficient customs for the parting ways with the dead, we would often cast in with neighboring clans when our numbers seemed too small.

And so as a young boy I pictured how these gatherings would appear. I was too young to really understand death, except to repeat what I had heard about the phenomena for all of my years. It seemed like for an occasion like death, the feelings were too large to be expressed by individuals. So I envisioned us gathering, setting a series of small campfires in a forest clearing wide enough that the periphery of the group was too dim to be fully perceived. We would listen and chant, taking refuge in each other's company from the troubling questions we only asked when someone had just departed for the afterlife.

It would be another five years before my legs were deemed strong enough to make the walk. It had been a hard winter, and three of our elders - well, it would be enough to say that they chose, with sound mind, when the cold and discomfort was too much for them. I had my own feelings about this that I was years away from being able to fully understand, but I now knew that this was not unique. The Valley Mourners had a word to describe these feelings - grief - and I... turned its letters and its shape over and over in my head while trying to understand the form it took.

And on the day, when I was weary from fasting and chanting, I had to quickly update my expectation. The dimly lit vigil, the massed voices, were nowhere to be found. We walked in a line, and slowly, pausing four or five beats on each leg before shifting our weight. The pace was set by the two musicians in front, and there were faster tunes known as Pathstriders, alongside the slower Road Ballads, and some probably akin to what you would call 'programmatic' music, telling stories of specific people who passed. It's not all slow and melancholic dirges as one might expect - there was some drive, some hum, something that simmered. But of course, in the open woods in this valley, the sound traveled out in front of them and was quickly lost. It took careful listening to stay in sync with each other as we walked, let alone with the music, and I recall feeling a flush of heat to my face, unable to do something so simple as walking with the group correctly.

In the deep woods it felt as though the sun never fully rose that day. But I do remember when the light stopped hitting the forest floor, and we had been walking for so long, and how could this disheveled procession possibly be an honor to our departed?

An elder took my shoulder then, knelt to the ground. I remember how swollen his face looked, beaded with sweat as though a fever was running through him. "We set out to walk together, but we cannot do it. I've walked with the Valley Mourners for countless seasons, and though I now know most of the songs by heart, I am no better at walking with the group now than I was as a lad. Why is that?" As if in response, my stomach growled, and the elder raised an eyebrow. From his pouch he snuck a corner of bread, and passed it to me. "Don't tell anyone I gave it to you."

He continued. "When we walk in this way, we face a thing we feel we should be able to control that we can actually do nothing about." I waited for him to say something else, to really wax it in place. He caught my expectant look with surprise, then annoyance that I hadn't taken his point from what little he offered. "It's practice!" A few heads turned in our direction. The elder held his finger up as if to shush me, but even in the low light I could see the corners of his lips behind it turning up into a sly smile.

I counted until I lost count, then slipped the corner of bread into my mouth, and let it sit there for awhile, slowly dissolving. I resumed my long steps. The best rehearsal for the unknowable sometimes takes the most obscure form.more

released August 8, 2023

Nahadoth is: Adam Matlock - pentatonic lyre, accordion, compositions, artwork, text.

Dedicated to C.B.M. in ways I do not yet know