In death, their mother's face was finally peaceful.

The deeply etched lines softened.

The taut mouth relaxed.

The perpetual scowl disappeared.

Her life had been one of endless stress and worry.

Raiders from the next tribe, drought during the rainy season, pests in her field of wheat,

sickness among her cattle, her wayward eldest boy's propensity for getting in fights until

one finally did get him killed, her daughter's fondness for the chief's foolish layabout

son, an endless array of problems

large and small to find her life. She was 42 years old. Her younger son and daughter buried their

mother with a pot that she'd made from long coils of clay and then decorated within sized lines.

The five children who hadn't survived were buried all around her, ranging in ages from

newborn to 17, their graves marked with wooden posts taken from the hazel trees surrounding their

farmstead. Her husband was a bit more distant from the rest, near the tree line. She hadn't

much cared for that man, she said, after his death. A hard woman, their mother, the son and

daughter agreed, but they shed tears for her nonetheless. Even before his death, their father

had never run the farm. This was her land. It had belonged to her father, and her siblings were

buried in this same field, hemmed in by the hazels. Their father had been an outsider here,

taken in a raid as a boy and

adopted into the clan to replace a dead member. Their mother had chosen him deliberately, since

she could be sure he had no grasping relatives to try to claim the land. He was a strong back,

and, she said, had once been a handsome face. That was their mother, the son and daughter reflected, always plotting and

...