My son shows me a small flat stone that speaks with a dead voice.
He does not want to touch it. He holds it far, the way you hold a snake you are not yet sure is dead. Then he presses the smooth face, and a voice comes out.
It is his mother. I know her voice. She died two cold seasons ago. We burned her, we sang, the smoke carried her up. She is gone from the tribe. And yet the flat stone keeps a piece of her, trapped, small, saying words about coming home late and buying bread.
This is powerful spirit-work. To catch a voice and cage it in stone so it lives when the throat is ash. My people would call this the deepest magic, done only by the oldest and most feared.
But my son does not use it to speak with her spirit. He does not ask her the great questions of the dead. He presses the stone, hears her once, and his face breaks like ice on a river. Then he cannot press it again for many days.
He owns the strongest fire I have ever seen and he is afraid to warm his hands at it.
I understand this. Some fires do not cook the meat.
They only cook the man.