The Offering of the Seventh Morning

In the winter of 2011, our village held the funeral of my brother Amin. After the formal prayers, the shamanic rite began, and only a handful of us remained. I was struck by how many stayed for this ancient ceremony. My grandmother, a keeper of old ways, had insisted on the full ritual, despite the town’s modern skepticism.

We gathered at the edge of the forest, where the mist clung to the pines like a shroud. The shaman, an old woman with eyes like cracked ice, chanted in a tongue I didn’t know. She lined up each family member in front of the pinewood coffin, and each of us held a white cloth. Inside, we placed dried mushrooms, a lock of hair, a silver coin, and a scrap of paper with a name. These were offerings for Amin’s journey to the other side. The shaman said that when we cut the threads binding the cloth, we would release his spirit, allowing him to cross the river of forgetting.

After the ceremony, the shaman followed my parents to our house, alone. She insisted on staying until the seventh morning, to ensure Amin’s spirit did not linger. That night, I heard the shaman whispering in the room where Amin used to sleep. The words were not meant for our ears, but they wove through the walls like smoke.

On the third morning, I noticed that the white cloth we had offered was back in our living room, still tied. The offerings were intact, but the scrap of paper had a different name, one I did not recognize. My grandmother paled. She said the spirit had refused the gifts, and that we must make a new offering, one that would satisfy a wandering soul.

The shaman told us that Amin had not crossed over. Instead, he was trapped between worlds, and he was hungry. She instructed us to prepare a special meal, one with no salt, and to leave it on the windowsill at midnight. We did, and that night, I saw a figure in the garden, standing under the bare oak tree. It had no face, only a smooth, grey void where features should be. It reached out a long, thin hand, and placed something on the sill before vanishing.

The next morning, the meal was gone, and in its place was a small, wooden box. Inside, there was a lock of hair, a silver coin, and a torn piece of paper with a name: the same name from before. My grandmother said we had to find who that name belonged to, or the spirit would never rest.

We searched through old records, but the name was not in our family tree. The shaman grew agitated. She said that the spirit was not Amin’s, but something older, something that had been waiting for an offering all along. It had taken Amin’s place, and now it wanted us to acknowledge it.

On the sixth night, I woke to the sound of the shaman chanting in the yard. She was surrounded by candles, and the figure was there, taller now, its head brushing the lowest branches. The shaman threw a handful of powder into the air, and the figure screamed, a sound like tearing roots. The shaman fell to the ground, and the candles blew out.

We found her the next morning, cold and grey, with a look of terror frozen on her face. On her chest lay the same wooden box, open, empty. The paper with the name was gone. My grandmother said we had no choice: we must bury the box in the forest, at the roots of an old oak, and say the name aloud.

The name was ‘Elara’. I didn’t know it, but it felt like a wound. At midnight, we carried the box to the tree. As we buried it, I whispered the name, and the ground shuddered. A wind rose, and the leaves rustled in a language I almost understood. Then, silence.

On the seventh morning, we held a second ceremony, this time for the shaman. But when we opened her coffin, it was empty. The only thing inside was a single, long, grey root, coiled in the shape of a body. I knew then that the forest had claimed her, and that Amin’s journey had never been about releasing him, but about feeding the roots that grew beneath our feet. They are patient, and they are always hungry.