"Why do we eat the dead?" asked little Mam in a voice so soft even the flap of a butterfly's wings could overpower it. It was close to dusk. They sat side by side on a log big enough to hold them both, though Xijam's buttocks, were beginning to ache from sitting too long on dense wood.
Xijam told his granddaughter the story of the greedy old woman.
"Fire and water, we use them for everything," his suddenly sneezed. "We cook meat with fire, we burn the jungle to enrich the soil before planting. But we drink water, and water takes our canoes to distant places up the river, we use it to wash the dirt and mud from our bodies."
He sneezed again, cleared his throat and continued with the old tale, “In the old days there was no fire, only water. Our lives were unbalanced; we could not eat meat
