Matthew dug the grave at the foot of the tree while Kiva and Dunne looked on. Then he and Dunne laid Quint’s body in the hole and covered her with dirt.
They were on their knees, patting the soil smooth, when Kiva heard the rustling in the grass at the bottom of the hill.
“Who’s there?” she shouted, fear fluttering in her chest.
But when the grasses at the bottom of the hill parted, it was only Grath and Liana who came through and walked up toward the tree at the top of the ridge.
Kiva breathed out. “What are you doing here?” she asked.
Liana stepped forward. “We tracked you across the plain all night,” she said. “We couldn’t stay in the village. Not after what happened. Not after—”
Liana abruptly stopped talking as her eyes looked over Kiva’s shoulder to the freshly turned soil of Quint’s grave.
“Is that … ?”
Kiva nodded, then stepped aside as Liana walked toward the grave. Her mother sank to her knees beneath the jagged branches of the tree, then reached forward and put her hand flat on the dirt. Kiva couldn’t see her face, and Liana didn’t make any sound—but her shoulders quaked, and Kiva knew at once that she was crying.
Grath walked up behind Liana and put a hand over her shoulder, draping his fingers across the soft of her throat. Liana reached up and clasped his hand in both of hers, then leaned back into him.
Kiva had been numb since leaving the village—but now, watching her parents weep over her sister’s grave, her tears began to flow again.
The pain of losing Quint would hurt for a long time. It might never stop hurting.
Grath turned. “Vagra, will you say the words?”
Kiva shook her head. “I’m not the Vagra anymore. I’m Kiva again. Just Kiva.”
“Even so,” Grath said. “Someone should speak.”
Kiva’s eyes came closed for a long moment, then opened again. She bowed her head.
“Every death contains within it the seeds of a rebirth,” she began, squinting as the light of the Great Mother began to crest over the prairie. “Every end is a beginning.”
After, they drifted apart—Dunne wandered off through the hills, as Grath and Liana walked down into the valley. Matthew paced slowly away from the tree, skirting the ridge, then sat on the ground, his arms resting on his bent legs as he looked down into the valley.
Kiva walked up behind him, the grasses rustling underneath her feet.
Matthew half-turned but didn’t say anything.
“May I?” Kiva asked.
“Of course,” Matthew said.
Kiva sat beside him and studied his face. He looked intently in front of him, his eyes fixed on the empty prairie as if some apparition, some vision, were appearing to him there.
“What do you see?” Kiva asked.
“Hmm?” Matthew asked, coming out of his daydream. “Oh. Nothing.”
“Tell me,” Kiva said.
Matthew let out a sigh.
“I was just thinking about what you were saying over your sister’s grave. What was it?”
“Every death contains within it the seeds of a rebirth,” Kiva recited. “Every end is a beginning.”
Matthew nodded. “Yeah, that’s it. Do you really believe that? Do you think it’s true?”
Kiva looked out and shrugged. “I don’t know. I hope it is.”
“Me too,” Matthew said. “I was also thinking about that story you told me, about First Mother and First Father.”
Kiva squinted. “Yeah? What about it?”
“Well,” Matthew began, angling his eyes into the space between them, “they made a life out of chaos, didn’t they? Out of death. Together, they started something new.”
Kiva didn’t say anything.
“And I’m thinking—well, maybe we can do that too. Start something new. Our own village. Our own tribe. One where things are different.”
Kiva looked down into the valley where Grath and Liana wandered shoulder to shoulder, speaking softly to one another—and immediately she felt the rightness of what Matthew was saying.
She was sad, still, about what had been, and afraid of what might come—but Kiva was hopeful, too: hopeful that this place might be better than the places that she and Matthew had left behind.
She looped her arm through Matthew’s elbow and pulled him close. She set her head on his shoulder and looked out with him on the vast, empty plains of Gle’ah.
“Yes,” she said softly. “Yes, I think that’s exactly what we’ll do.”