Chapter 502 — Memorial Day
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 4
This was a day of special significance to the people of Ansu.
The Day of Memorial.
Every year on the 45th of Frostmonth, festival celebrations unfolded across the whole nation as scheduled. On this day, as the cold deepened, the people of Ansu would bring out the last of the food and strength they could afford to squander, in memory of their forebears and of the kin and friends who had already returned to the realm of the dead.
Though many in the present age had forgotten what the festival originally meant, centuries of tradition had made the 45th of Frostmonth a date steeped in mystery, longing, hope, and remembrance. Many Ansu people firmly believed that on this day the gates of the kingdom of the dead would swing open, and that souls already departed—whether they had gone to the halls of the God of Death, to the sacrificial grounds of the Blood God, or to the realm of some other deity—would be granted the chance to return to the world of the living. These souls would come along roads paved with death's-herald chrysanthemums, celebrate the festival alongside the living, and appear at night beside the bonfires, in the form of shapeless smoke, flame, or shadow, to keep company with those who missed them.
Thus, though it was a day for remembering the dead, the people of Ansu spent it in celebration. They decorated their doorways with flowers, hung wreaths of straw on their hearths or on the walls facing their front doors, lit great bonfires, and sang and danced beside them—they celebrated this day because they firmly believed that the souls would come home to look in on them.
And beyond commemorating the dead, the Memorial Day held another meaning for Ansu as a northern kingdom: it marked the end of most social activity.
The 45th of Frostmonth was the last day on which the Flowing Fire constellation crossed the Celestial Palace line; its arrival meant that winter was drawing near. There were still a dozen or so days before winter proper, but the weather in the northern kingdom had already grown too cold to keep squandering one's strength out of doors. Perhaps the nobles would still hold a few atmospheric winter banquets on snowy days, but for commoners short of food, fuel, and clothing, this was their last chance of the year for large-scale outdoor activity.
After careful reckoning, people pooled their fuel and food, lifted their spirits with one final celebration, and prayed to the souls of their ancestors for favorable weather in the year to come. Simple folk held simple thoughts: praying to the three gods of Abundance was the privilege of the priests of Abundance, and asking the druids for a good harvest cost no small sum of money; better, then, to light bonfires on this last festival before winter and hope that the dead—who might already have entered the realms of the gods—would lend them a hand, and bless them with three or five extra catties of grain next year.
With such simple hopes people celebrated the annual Memorial Day, and when it was over they went into dormancy, just like the forebears who had already returned to the realm of the dead, lying quietly dormant through the long winter that followed.
In Saint Frosthold, a faint, delicate fragrance of death's-herald chrysanthemums drifted through every street and alley. Though the whole kingdom was still mired in war, the Memorial Day had arrived on schedule—or rather, it was precisely because the storm of war was pouring down that people so urgently needed this festival, to comfort the souls about to set out on their journey.
White flowers had been planted before every household's door; decorative straw ropes or flower vines hung from the eaves of every house. Adults carried the firewood they had gathered to the nearest square or open ground to prepare for the evening bonfires, while carefree children shouted and screamed around them, chasing and scuffling, burning off their strength and energy.