The funeral rite was simple. No body to wrap in birch bark, no pyre to light. Sitka’s spirit had already left—they all felt it, a strange warmth in the cold air, like a hand on the back of your neck that wasn’t there. Tanana took a lock of fur from a white wolf, a feather from a golden eagle, and a shard of the broken ice bridge. She tied them together with sinew and placed the bundle in a cleft of the rock.
Kenai turned on her, his voice cracking. “He’s dead because of me! I was supposed to watch his back. I was supposed to—” brother bear sitka's funeral
“It should have been me,” Kenai whispered. The funeral rite was simple
The shaman, Tanana, stepped forward. Her voice was old and thin as winter ice, but it carried across the clearing. “A hunter does not flee the shadow. He walks into it and brings back light.” She raised a caribou antler, carved with spirals of stars and salmon. “Sitka walked into the shadow for you, Kenai. For all of us.” Tanana took a lock of fur from a
High above, a real eagle circled once against the pale sun. Then it turned and flew west, toward the mountains that had no names.
The villagers began to sing—a low, humming song without words, like the earth itself breathing. Denahi pulled Kenai into his arms, and this time Kenai did not pull away. He buried his face in his brother’s shoulder and let out a sound that was not quite a sob and not quite a howl. It was the sound of a boy becoming someone new.
Denahi did not answer. He placed a hand on his younger brother’s shoulder, but Kenai shook it off like a wolf shedding water.