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She glanced at her sister. “Gather sticks,” she said. “We’ll need a small fire.”
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    Gervaise set the young men a few paces away on either side, close enough to guard the women while they worked over the body, but far enough away to give them the privacy that was necessary for the rite. Katerina had taken Melina back to camp, to set her to work gathering the clothes with which Belinda would be buried. While she was gone, Sarafina arranged twigs and sticks carefully on the ground beside her cousin, but not too close.
    Katerina returned, three bundles of dried herbs in her hands. She handed her sister a bit of each. “Are we ready to begin?” she asked.
    Sarafina nodded, and lowered her torch to the pile of twigs and sticks. It caught on the first try, a very good omen. The flames spread rapidly. Fina jammed the torch into a notch in a nearby tree.
    â€œFirst the thyme,” she said, and they each tossed a handful of the herb into the fire.
    â€œNext the sage,” Katerina whispered. “And last the rosemary.”
    They cast the remaining herbs into the fire in the correct order, then began to walk backward and countersunwise around it as fragrant drafts of smoke billowed to the heavens. “Belinda Rosemerta Prastika,” they whispered together. They walked round the fire, round the body, and increased their pace, chanting the name of their cousin over and over, a little louder each time. Seven times around the fire they went, and Sarafina felt the power they raised growing stronger all the while. At the end of the seventh time around, they stopped, each at the same instant, faced the body and lifted their hands.
    Sarafina felt the energy—and, she hoped, her cousin’s spirit with it—shoot forth from the circle they had trod, straight into the heavens.
    Letting their bodies relax, they stood still and silent, each in her own thoughts.
    Sarafina closed her eyes and sighing, lowered herself to the ground.
    â€œThe ritual is the job of the Shuvani, ” Katerina said. “One of honor. And we have done it well. Preparing the body is not.”
    Handling a dead body was a despised task among the tribe. When their own grandmother had passed, she had been bathed and dressed in her finest clothes even while she lay dying. No Gypsy wanted to touch the dead.
    â€œPerhaps Gervaise wishes to teach us the lesson of humility,” Sarafina suggested. “Quiet, now. Melina returns.”
    Melina carried a bundle of clothing, a pail of water scented with herbs and oils, and a soft cloth. She glanced at the small fire that had been left to burn itself out but said nothing. She had lived a long time and had no doubt seen the fire before. She knew better than to ask its meaning. The death rites were secret, known only to the Shuvani, passed from grandmother to granddaughter. Sarafina and her sister had learned them from their grandmother, as they had so many other things.
    Melina knelt, watching in silence, waiting for the two of them to do the job they had been given. Sarafina thought in that moment, that even her hardhearted sister felt moved.
    So they knelt, and they gently undressed the shell that had been Belinda. They washed the young woman carefully, even though every touch made chills race up Sarafina’s spine. Belinda was not yet cold, but cool to the touch. She tried to keep the cloth between her palm and Belinda’s flesh, but sometimes it slipped.
    When the washing was finished, the two women unrolled and unfolded the red fabric Melina had brought; then they laid it out beside Belinda. Sarafina rolled the dead woman up onto one side, because she knew that while touching the corpse chilled her to her very marrow, her sister simply could not bring herself to do it. So she rolled poor Belinda, and Katerina tucked the cloth beneath her as far as she could manage. Then Fina lowered the body gently onto the cloth and rolled it up onto its other side, so