He smiled at her crookedly, but said nothing. He made a gesture to Koresz with one of the shovels. Koresz took the shovel without hesitation. And the doctor did not have to be told to drape strips of colored fabric over his shoulders.
That done, the two men advanced slowly onto the patch of cleared soil, facing the maia who was creating it.
The maia stopped, stared. Ochre bands were added to its coloration. Julius made shoo-ing motions with his hands, which, to a human, would have signaled: “Move back.”
When he saw that the maia wasn’t moving, Julius sighed heavily.
“Ever play football?” he asked Koresz.
“Please! I am not a barbarian.”
“Well, rookie, lend me a shoulder anyway.”
So saying, Julius stooped and lowered his upper body until his shoulder was butted gently against the cowl of the maia. Koresz, uncertainly, followed suit.
Then, slowly but with as much strength as he could muster, Julius attempted to push the creature back.
It might have moved an inch. Maybe. But the hoot which it emitted carried a clear tone of surprise.
Julius straightened up, grimacing, rubbing his lower back.
“As I feared,” he muttered. “It’s like trying to block Lawrence Taylor.”
“Who?” asked Koresz.
“An ancient legend from the dawn of time, Vladimir, whose name is known only to barbarians like me who happen to be the few football fans left on Earth in these effete modern days. A hero, from the Golden Past. A demi-god. Think of Hercules, or Theseus. Or both rolled into one. Sorta like that.”
He stared at the maia, chewing his upper lip.
“I guess we’ll just have to try to dig around—”
Suddenly, the maia edged back until it was clear of the patch.
“Well. Thank you. Took you long enough, dimbulb.”
He started digging. He and Koresz.
It took a long time to dig a grave big enough to accommodate the body of Wolugo, especially since Julius insisted on what he called “the regulation six feet.” Indira, when she took her turn with the shovel (all the adult humans took a turn in the grave, even Adams—although he only lasted fifteen minutes), suggested to Julius that the maia were probably accustomed to shallow graves. But Julius had been unmoved.
“Yeah, probably so. But I finally found something that humans can do for them that they can’t do very well for themselves, and I’m not about to do a slipshod job of it.”
Despite her aching muscles, she found herself suddenly in agreement with his point of view.
By the time they were finished, it was late in the day. Indira was not surprised to see that, while the humans had dug the grave, the maia had been gathering clumps of oruc.
Food, to sustain the dead in their voyage.
Nor was she surprised to see that Joseph had organized the children to provide their own gifts. And so it was that when the body of the maia Wolugo was lowered into her grave, she was accompanied not only by clumps of oruc but by strips of cloth, small tools (whose use she would not have understood), toys, trinkets, and several of the small bowls that the colonists had made to eat the maia-food.
It was those last gifts, more than anything else, which brought tears to Indira’s eyes.
Bowls. So that the gentle giant, if she encountered starving children in the afterworld, could once again give life to the dead.
The next day, Indira left the human camp and went to live with the maia. She remained there for months, refusing all contact with adult humans (even Julius; but he was not hurt, because he understood), and refusing to speak to the children if they used any Terran language.
When she returned, the adults gathered about the evening campfire. Her first words were simply:
“The name `maia’ is wrong. They are called owoc.”
When she told Joseph, he nodded, and corrected her pronunciation.
Interlude: Nukurren
For Nukurren, the first two days after her capture were a blur. She recovered consciousness briefly, at several intervals. But beyond a vague awareness of Dhowifa, she recognized nothing before lapsing again into darkness.
Then, just after dawn on what she would learn was the third day since the massacre of the caravan, she awoke clear-headed. Very, very weak. But clear-headed.