Ekan

Ekan was born in a small farming settlement in the wooded hills above the Pannonian plain, where households lived under the customs archaeologists later grouped into the Central European Tumulus world. No writing marked his family’s speech; they used an Indo-European vernacular. Authority sat close by: elders, lineages, and men who could gather others for seasonal work and rites. At planting time and harvest, the community met at a clearing with food, drink, and fire, asking for steady weather and healthy animals.

His father, Marwyn, worked mixed fields and stock. His mother, Sela, kept the hearth, ground grain, cooked, hauled water, and spun fiber when her hands were free. Ekan was the third child. The firstborn, a boy named Brost, had died soon after birth. Lina, a sister born two years before Ekan, died at three just months before he arrived. Her name stayed in the adults’ talk when they checked a child’s skin or wiped a mouth too quickly.

By two, Ekan ran between the house and the yard and wanted eyes on him. Each morning he carried a small bundle of kindling to the hearth and set it in the same spot. If Sela moved it, he yanked it back and put it straight, then chattered until she looked. He kept smooth stones in a row along a timber and shoved Vyn, a neighbor boy, away when Vyn reached for one.

When Marwyn came back from the animals, Ekan ran out calling and grabbed a stick to push chickens and a young goat toward the pen, laughing and looking over his shoulder for approval. A sudden flap or sharp bleat made him stiffen and wail, and he held tight to Sela’s skirt before he tried again.

A younger brother, Trost, was born when Ekan was two. Three months later, in midsummer, Ekan drank water from a fouled spring and ate food that had turned. Diarrhea began and did not stop. He weakened over four days and died, aged three. His family wrapped him in linen and placed him in the community’s burial ground with a small clay cup and a pinch of grain. At the next seasonal gathering, his name was spoken aloud over the fire.