He held his hand up to his mouth to cover a smile, then said, ‘The journey across the eastern ice to the Unreal City will be long and hard, yes?’
‘Yes,’ Soli said. ‘Very hard.’
‘Even a man might not complete such a journey – Totunye, the bear, may hunt him, or the Serpent’s Breath might strike him and kill him with cold, or –’
‘Yes, the journey will be dangerous,’ Soli broke in.
‘What if I were left alone to find the City?’ Danlo asked softly. ‘Or if the slow evil found you at last out on the ice? What if the shadow-men in the Unreal City do not know halla? Maybe the shadow-men would kill you for your meat. If you died before my passage, sir, how would I ever become a man?’
For Danlo, as for every Alaloi boy, the initiation into manhood is the third most important of life’s transformations and mysteries, the other two being birth and death.
Soli rubbed his temples and sighed. He was very tired but he must have clearly seen the logic of Danlo’s argument, that he would have to make his passage a year before his time. He smiled at him and said, ‘Do you think you are ready, Danlo? You are so young.’
‘I am almost fourteen.’
‘So young,’ Soli repeated. ‘Even fifteen years is sometimes too young. The cutting is very painful, and there have been many boys older than you who were not ready for the pain of the knife. And then, after the cutting …’ He let his voice die off and looked at Danlo.
‘And then there is the secret knowledge, yes? The Song of the Ancestors?’
‘No, after the pain, there is terror. Sheer terror.’
He knew that Soli was trying to frighten him, so he smiled to hide his fear. The air inside the hut was steamy from the boiling tea and from their rhythmic exhalations; it was selura, wet cold – not as absolutely cold as white cold, but cold enough to lap at his skin like a thirsty seal and make him shiver slightly. He pulled himself down into his furs, trying to keep warm. All his life, from the older boys and young men, he had heard rumours about the passage into manhood. It was like dying, Choclo had once said, dying transcendently, ur-alashara; it was like going over, not to the other side of day, but going over oneself to find a new, mysterious world within. He thought about what it would be like to go over, and he tried to sleep, but he was too full of death and life, too full of himself. All at once, his whole body was shivering beyond his control. He had an overwhelming sense that his life, every day and night, would be supremely dangerous, as if he were walking a snowbridge over a crevasse. He felt wild and fey in anticipation of making this eternal crossing. And then, deep inside, a new knowledge sudden and profound: he loved the dark, wild part of himself as he loved life. Ti-miura halla, follow your love, follow your fate – wasn’t this the teaching of a hundred generations of his people? If he died during his passage, died to himself or died the real death of blood and pain, he would die in search of life, and he thought this must be the most halla thing a man could do.
The shivering stopped, and he found himself smiling naturally. ‘Isn’t terror just the left hand of fate?’ he asked. ‘Will you take me through my passage tomorrow, sir?’
‘No, tomorrow we shall hunt shagshay. We shall hunt, then eat and sleep to regain our strength.’
‘And then?’
Soli rubbed his nose and looked at him. ‘And then, if you are strong enough and keep your courage, you will become a man.’
Four days later, at dusk, they strapped on their skis and made the short journey to Winter Pock, a nearby hill where the Devaki men held their secret ceremonies. Danlo was not allowed to speak, so he skied behind Soli in silence. As he planted his poles and pushed and glided through the snow, he listened to the sounds of the forest: the loons warbling with bellies full of yu berries; the clicking of the sleekits halfway out of their burrows, warning each other that danger was near; the wind keening across the hills, up through the great yu trees heavy with snow. It was strange the way he could hear the wind far off before he could feel it stinging his face. He listened for Haidar’s rough voice in the wind, and the voices of his other ancestors, too. But the wind was just the wind; it was only the cold, clean breath of the world. He hadn’t yet entered into the dreamtime, where his mother’s dying plaints and the moaning of the wind would be as one. He smelled sea ice and pine needles in the wind; as the light failed and the greens and reds bled away from the trees, the whole forest was rich with the smells of the freezing night and with life.
In silence, they climbed up the gentle slopes of Winter Pock. The hill was treeless and barren at the top, like an old man whose hair has fallen off the crown of his head. Set into the snow around a large circle were wooden stakes. Each stake was topped with the skull of a different animal. There were a hundred different skulls: the great, tusked skull of Tuwa, the mammoth; the skulls of Nunki and long, pointed skulls of the snow fox and wolf; there were many, many smaller skulls, those of the birds, Ayeye, the thallow, and Gunda and Rakri, and Ahira, the snowy owl. Danlo had never seen such a sight in all of his life, for the boys of the tribe were not allowed to approach Winter Pock. In the twilight, the circle of greyish-white skulls looked ominous and terrifying. Danlo knew that each man, after his cutting, would look up at the skulls to find his doffel, his other-self, the one special animal he would never again hunt. His doffel would guide him into the dreamtime, and later, through all the days of his life. Beyond this bit of common knowledge, Danlo knew almost nothing of what was to come.
Soli kicked off his skis and led him inside the circle of skulls. At the circle’s centre, oriented east to west, was a platform of packed snow. ‘When we begin,’ Soli said, ‘you must lie here facing the stars.’ He explained that it was traditional for the initiate boy to lie on the backs of four kneeling men, but since the men had all gone over, the platform would have to do. Around the platform were many piles of wood. Soli held a glowing coal to each pile in turn, and soon there were dozens of fires blazing. The fires would keep Danlo from freezing to death.
‘And now we begin,’ Soli said. He spread a white shag-shay fur over the platform and bade Danlo to remove his clothes. Night had fallen, and a million stars twinkled against the blackness of the sky. Danlo lay down on his back, with his head toward the east as in any important ceremony. He looked up at the stars. The lean muscles of his thighs, belly and chest were hard beneath his ivory skin. Despite the fires’ flickering heat, he was instantly cold.
‘You may not move,’ Soli said. ‘No matter what you hear, you may not turn your head. And you may not close your eyes. Above all, on pain of death, you may not cry out. On pain of death, Danlo.’
Soli left him alone, then, and Danlo stared up at the deep dome of the sky. The world and the sky, he thought – two halves of the great circle of halla enfolding all living things. He knew that the lights in the sky were the eyes of his ancestors, the Old Ones, who had come out this night to watch him become a man. There were many, many lights; Soli had taught him the art of counting, but he could not count the number of Old Ones who had lain here before him because it would be unseemly to count the spirits of dead men as one did pebbles or shells by the sea. He looked up at the stars, and he saw the eyes of his father, and his father’s fathers, and he prayed that he would not break the great circle with cries of pain.
After a while he began to hear sounds. There came sharp, clacking sounds, as of two rocks being struck together. As the fires burned over him, the rhythm of the clacking quickened; it grew louder and nearer. The sound split the night. Danlo’s right half knew that it must be Soli making this unnerving sound, but his left half began to wonder. He could not move his head; it seemed that the eyelight of the Old Ones was streaming out of the blackness, dazzling him with light. The clacking hurt his ear now and was very close. He could not move his head to look, and he feared that the Old Ones were coming to test him with terror. Suddenly, the clacking stopped. Silence fell over him. He waited a long time, and all he could hear was his deep breathing and the