Six of them sit in a ring, holding hands in the dark. This I know. This is the old shape. My tribe made this shape too, around the fire, when the winter took a hunter and we could not carry him home. You sit close. You hold on. You keep the dark from taking one more.
But there is no fire. That is the first wrong thing. They light only small stumps of soft white fat, and the flames tremble like a sick child. Six strong hunters, and they cannot make one good fire between them.
They call a name. Again. Again. A dead man's name, spoken into the room like meat left out for a spirit. They want him to come back and speak.
I do not understand this. When a hunter dies, we sing him, we burn him, we do not beg him to crawl back into the cold cave of his bones. The dead are done hunting. Let them rest by the great fire and leave us to ours.
One of them gasps. The table knocks. They shiver and grip tighter, faces pale, eyes wide, and I see it now, the true thing under all their asking:
They are not lonely for the dead.
They are afraid of the quiet.