‘Haidar and Chandra have gone over,’ Danlo said. He looked at Soli.
‘Yes, they were the last.’
‘Haidar and Chandra,’ Danlo repeated, and he wiped a clump of melting snow away from his forehead. And then he said a prayer for his found-parents’ spirits: ‘Haidar eth Chandra, mi alasharia la shantih Devaki.’
Soli rubbed his nose with his three-fingered hand and said, ‘Shantih, shantih.’
‘And Sanya,’ Danlo said, ‘and Mahira, they have gone over, too.’
‘Shantih,’ Soli said.
‘And Irisha, Yukio and Jemmu – all alasharu.’
‘Shantih.’
‘And Rafael, Choclo and Anevay. And Mentina, they have all made the great journey.’
‘Yes,’ Soli said, ‘shantih.’
‘They are all dead.’
‘Yes.’
‘Ten days ago, all alive and fat with life, even Old Anala, and now –’
‘Do not speak of it. Words are only words – there is no purpose.’
Danlo took off his mittens and pressed his eyes; the hot water there burned his cold thumbs. ‘I am so tired,’ he said. And then, ‘The blessed Devaki – the whole tribe, sir. How can this be?’
Soli turned his face to the north, saying nothing.
Danlo followed his gaze outward, upward to where the pointed summit of Kweitkel rose above them. It was a great shining mountain marbled in granite and ice, a god watching over them. Four thousand years ago the first Devaki had named the island after the mountain forming its centre. Generation upon generation of Danlo’s ancestors were buried here. He closed his eyes as the wind came up and whipped his hair wildly about his head. There was ice in the wind, the smell of pine needles, salt, and death. ‘Kweitkel, shantih,’ he whispered. Soon he must bury his people in the graveyard above the cave, and after that, the Devaki would be buried on Kweitkel no longer.
‘It was bad luck,’ Soli said at last, rubbing the thick brows of his forehead. ‘Yes, bad luck.’
‘I think it was shaida,’ Danlo said. ‘It is shaida for our people to die too soon, yes?’
‘No, it was just bad luck.’
Danlo held his hand over his forehead to keep his hair from lashing into his eyes. He had thick black hair shot with strands of red. ‘In all the stories Haidar told over the oilstones, in all your stories, too, I have never heard of a whole tribe going over all at once. I never thought it was possible. I … never thought. Where has this shaida come from? What is wrong with the world that everyone could die like this? “Shaida is the cry of the world when it has lost its soul” – why is the world crying of shaida, sir?’
Soli put his arm around him, and touched his head. Danlo wept freely, then, wept for a long time into Soli’s stiff, frozen furs until a cold thought sobered him. He was only thirteen years old, but among the Devaki, thirteen is almost old enough to be a man. He looked at Soli, whose icy blue eyes were also full of tears. ‘Why us, Soli? Why didn’t the slow evil carry us over, too?’
Soli looked down at the ground. ‘It was luck,’ he said. ‘Just bad luck.’
Danlo heard the pity and pain in Soli’s voice, and it carried him close to despair. Soli, too, was ready for death. Anyone, even a child could see that. There was madness and death in his eyes and all over his haggard, grey face. The wind blowing through the forest and over the icy boulders all around them was very cold, almost dead cold, and Danlo felt like dying himself. But he couldn’t let himself die because he loved life too much. Wasn’t it shaida to die too soon? Hadn’t he seen as much of shaida as he could bear? He blew on his chilled, purple fingers and put his mittens back on. Yes, he must live because it was not time for him to go over yet, he was still young and full of life, still just a boy who suddenly knew that he had to find an answer to shaida.
He looked into the cave, at the great, black gash in the side of the hill where Jonath and his other near-brothers lay entombed. ‘It is strange that the slow evil did not take me, yes? Perhaps the slow evil is afraid of wildness. I have always been a little wild, I think. Haidar used to say I was wild, with all my talk of driving a sled east into the sunrise. He used to say I listened to you too much. When I was a boy –’
‘Shhh, you talk too much.’
‘But I have to ask you this, sir; I must know a thing.’
‘What is that?’
‘When I was a boy, I wanted to find the bed of Sawel from where he arises each morning to light the world. Pure wildness, as Haidar always warned. Tell me, sir, you must know – was I born with this wild face? My face is so different than the faces of my brothers. And they were so much stronger and hardier in their bodies; they never seemed to feel the cold. Why did they go over and not I?’
Soli looked at him and said, ‘It was fate. Just blind fate.’
Danlo was disturbed by the way Soli spoke of fate. There was galia, he knew, the World-soul, and one could certainly speak of the wilu-galia, the intention of the World-soul, but how could the World-soul be blind? No, he thought, only people or animals (or God, himself) could be blind. As Haidar had taught him, he shut his eyes again and breathed frigid air to clear his inner sight. He tried to askeerawa wilu-galia, to see the intention of the World-soul, but he could not. There was only darkness in front of him, as deep and black as a cave without light. He opened his eyes; the cold needles of wind made him blink. Could it be that Haidar had told him and the other children false stories about the animals, about the birth and life of the World? Could it be that everything he knew was wrong? Perhaps only full men were able to see that the World-soul’s intention was shaida; perhaps this was what Soli meant by blind fate.
‘It is cold,’ Soli said, stamping his feet. ‘It is cold and I am tired.’
He turned to step toward the cave and Danlo followed him. He, too, was tired, so tired that his tendons ached up and down his limbs and he felt sick in his belly, as if he had eaten bad meat. For thirteen years of his life, ever since he could remember, entering the cave from the outside world had always been a moment full of warmth, certitude, and quiet joy. But now nothing would ever be the same again, and even the familiar stones of the entranceway – the circular, holy stones of white granite that his ancestors had set there – were no comfort to him. The cave itself was just as it had been for a million years: a vast lava tube opening into the side of the mountain; it was a natural cathedral of gleaming obsidian, flowing rock pendants hanging from ceiling to floor, and deep silences. Now, in the cave of his ancestors, there was too much silence and too much light. While Danlo had slept in the snow, Soli had gathered faggots of bonewood and placed them at fifty-foot intervals around the cave walls. He had set them afire. The whole of the cave was awash with light, flickering orange and ruby lights falling off the animal paintings on the walls, falling deep into the cave’s dark womb where the cold floor rose up to meet the ceiling. Danlo smelled woodsmoke, pungent and sweet, and the firelight itself was so intense it seemed to have a fragrance all its own. And then he smelled something else layered beneath the smells of wood, fur, and snow. Touching every rock and crack of the cave, all around him and through him, was the stench of death. Though he breathed through his mouth and sometimes held his breath, he could not escape this terrible stench. The bodies of the dead were everywhere. All across the snow-packed floor, his near-brothers and sisters lay together in no particular order or pattern, a heap of bent arms, hair, furs, rotting blood, thick black beards, and dead eyes. They reminded Danlo of a shagshay herd driven off a cliff. Leaving them inside