Are you hungry?” Aurelia asked, after hearing a long, low grumble emanate from the general direction of Lucius’s stomach.

“I’m ready to eat anything! I have plenty of coins; shall I buy us some of those horn-shaped cakes?”

The scent of cinnamon rose from cakes freshly baked on a fire. It was driving him to distraction, and he realized he had not eaten anything since the day before.

“You don’t have to buy food at the festival. Those are special cakes meant as offerings to the gods. I have many friends and relations here; we can easily find a meal! Follow me.”

She led him through a confusing neighborhood of goatskin and linen tarps, and he wondered how she could possibly know where she was going. Then they finally reached the far edge of the encampment on the side opposite to the beach.

“See the throng of people high on that hill? They are sharing a meal with the dead. We can join them,” she said gaily.

Once again, his breath choked in his throat. “Eat with the dead? Surely not!”

“Oh, yes,” she replied. “We do it every year at this time.”

Lucius was used to mournful funeral processions and burials on Inissi Leuca, garnished with plenty of doleful preaching about the Day of Judgment and the horrors of hell. The idea of happy communion with dead people was something uniquely bizarre.

They followed a well-worn path up the grassy slope and soon came upon a group of Aurelia’s relations amidst the other picnicking families. Her father, Melor, Uncle Sadwrn, Aunt Aude, her ten-year-old sister Breaca, her mother, Weluela, and her ancient grandparents Anna and Cadfan sat dressed in wide yellow straw hats and pale tunics to protect them from the blazing sun. They waved joyfully in Aurelia’s direction the moment they recognized her. The family was comfortably ensconced on woolen blankets spread in front of an ancient stone chair. They were all lean, tanned, and muscular, with broad, toothy grins.

“Ho! I see you have caught yourself a nice fish for after the fires!” said Aunt Aude with a smile and a twinkle in her eyes.

“More like a whale by the size of him!” added her mother with a wink. Everyone laughed.

Embarrassed by their joking, Lucius had no idea what “after the fires” meant, but he instinctively hunched his shoulders to shrink himself down to more closely match the family’s stature.

“This is my new friend Lucius, from Inissi Leuca,” Aurelia declared proudly.

A slight silence and a meeting of glances came at the mention of the Cristaidi isle.

“I have never … actually met anyone from that island,” said her grandfather, picking his words with care. He had heard of terrible events further inland; some monks were known to be violent. But it was Giamonios, after all, and peace and hospitality were due by custom to everyone who set foot within the festival grounds.

The family invited Lucius and Aurelia to sit and passed them wooden plates and cups, green beans pickled with whole garlic cloves, red, green, and black olives dripping in oil, a large round loaf of barley bread, and the remnants of a huge wheel of goat cheese that had held the place of honor on a platter in the middle of the blankets. A basketful of dried apples, dates, and raisins and a dish of fresh strawberries followed.

They also passed around a goatskin of uinom, and every so often one of the family rose to squeeze some of the crimson liquid into a little silver cup placed on the stone seat. Samples of every food filled a plate on the grass before the chair.

Only after Lucius had cleaned two bowlfuls of food and carefully mopped up every last drop of oil with a piece of barley bread did he find his tongue. “Why is that rock carved to look like a chair? And why is that cup sitting there?”

Grandmother Anna replied, squirting a bit more uinom into the silver cup. “This is the Hill of the Ancestors. Our family, going back for thousands of sun cycles, is buried here; we’re sitting on their bones that lie under the grass. The chair is for them, so they can sit here and watch over the countryside. From that chair, you can see the peninsula, our farm, the beach, the gathering, everything!” She waved her arm to emphasize the glorious extent of the view.

“We’re sitting on their graves?” Lucius felt slightly sick, as if he were falling backwards into a tilting world. He had been taught that it was disrespectful to even walk over a grave, though he knew that the monks and brothers sometimes dug a bit of earth from the grave of a holy person or a martyr for use in their healing work.

“Oh, yes, we come here every year at festival time to keep our ancestors company and to give them food. Our children and grandchildren will do it for us one day too,” said Aurelia happily. “Don’t the Cristaidi feed their dead?”

“Er … no, not like that,” said Lucius. “We might lay flowers on a grave or speak to our dead, and we pray for them all the time. But we are not supposed to desecrate a grave by actually sitting on it.”

“That’s silly,” said Breaca with an all-knowing air as she added another strawberry to the dish before the stone seat.