Soli saw Danlo gazing at Ahira’s small, round skull. That the Devaki fathers had acquired a skull at all was something of a miracle, for Ahira was the rarest of all birds and hunters did not often catch sight of him.
‘This bird?’ Soli said. ‘Are you sure, Danlo?’
‘Yes,’ Danlo said. ‘Ahira, the snowy owl.’
‘Full men know this bird as the white thallow. You should call him that, too.’
Everyone knew, of course, that owls were thallows, just as they knew that God was a great thallow whose body made up the universe. But among the Alaloi elders, from tribe to tribe, there was a dispute as to whether God was a silver thallow, or the blue thallow, or the rare white thallow whom children referred to as the snowy owl.
‘Ahira is my doffel,’ Danlo said.
‘Very well,’ Soli said. Then he magically produced a musty leather bag stuffed with various objects. He rummaged around in the bag and removed a single, white feather. He gave it to Danlo, placing it between his folded hands. ‘This is the wing feather of the white thallow,’ he said. ‘The white thallow is your doffel.’
Danlo looked down at the feather. Its whiteness was as pure as snow. Along its edge it was rough and fuzzy, the better to muffle the sound of Ahira’s beating wings. Ahira was a magnificent hunter, and he could swoop down toward his prey in almost total silence. With a little bone clip that Soli gave him, Danlo fastened the feather to his long hair. Soli began to chant, then, and a world whose snowfields were pure and vast opened before him. Danlo entered into the dreamtime, into the altjiranga mitjina of his people. The shock of pain and terror (and his newfound ability to overcome his attachment to terror) had hurled him into this world. He listened to Soli chant, listened as the Old Ones began to speak to him. New knowledge was revealed to him, secrets that only a man may know. Soli chanted the lines of the Song of Life. The Song was a new way of structuring reality, a system of symbol and meaning connecting all things of the world to the great circle of halla. There are four thousand and ninety-six lines to this song; Soli chanted quickly, his deep voice rasping out the music. He told of how the lesser god, Kweitkel, had created the world from single pieces of rock and ice. He told of Kweitkel’s wedding with Devaki, and of their children, Yelena, Reina and Manwe. Danlo learned that on the third morning of the world, wise Ahira had befriended Manwe and taught him to love flying, hunting, and mating, and the other things of life. Manwe and Ahira – the Two Friends, two of the oldest of the Old Ones. Danlo listened to the Song of Life, and he joined them in the dreamtime. The dreamtime was now, the shall-be and always-was. The dreamtime occurred in the Now-moment, the true time in which the world was forever created anew.
‘Ali wos Ayeye,’ Soli chanted. ‘God is a great, silver thallow whose wings touch at the far ends of the universe.’
Danlo listened to the Song of Life’s sixty-fourth line. Now, and over the next three days, he must learn every line exactly as Soli chanted it because someday he would repeat the Song to a son or near-son of his own. Pain was the most potent of mnemonics; pain had awakened him to record the rise and fall and each liquid vowel; pain, and the intensity of pain, had prepared his mind and spirit to remember perfectly.
‘All animals remember …’ Soli sang out, and his voice began to tremble and crack. ‘All animals remember the first morning of the world.’ He stopped suddenly, rubbing the back of his neck. His face had fallen as grey as old seal grease. He licked his lips and continued with difficulty. After a while, he came to the first of the Twelve Riddles, chanting: ‘How do you capture a beautiful bird without killing its spirit?’
Danlo waited for Soli to supply the answer in the second line of the couplet, but Soli could not speak. He groaned and clutched at his stomach and looked at Danlo.
‘Sir, what is wrong?’ Danlo asked. He didn’t want to speak because he sensed that the uttering of words would remove him from the dreamtime. But Soli suddenly heaved over gasping for breath, and he had to find out what was wrong. Now that he knew the way, he could make the journey into the dreamtime whenever he must. ‘Sir, here, let me loosen your hood’s drawstring – it is too tight.’
It was obvious that Soli was gravely ill. Sweat beaded on his forehead, and his nose was bleeding. His eyes were the eyes of a whale caught unexpectedly in the freezing ice of the sea. Danlo stood up, and the rush of blood into his cut membrum was agony. He helped Soli lie down on the bloody platform where he had so recently surrendered up his childhood flesh. The Alaloi are not an ironic people, but he appreciated the deep irony of their reversed positions.
‘Sir, are you all right?’
‘No,’ Soli gasped, ‘never … again.’ He regained his wind, and spoke slowly. ‘Listen, Danlo, you must know. At a boy’s passage, one of the men must be the Beast. The Beast … the mask.’
With difficulty he bent over and stuck his hand into the leather bag. He removed a mask made of glued-together bones, fur, teeth and feathers. He rattled the mask in front of Danlo.
‘But it is sometimes hard to become the Beast,’ Soli said. ‘If the boy moves or cries out … then he must be slain. It is hard to become the Beast by wearing the mask alone. Help is needed. For some men, help. On the afternoon before the boy’s passage, the liver of the jewfish must be eaten. The liver gives terrible vision, terrible power. But it is dangerous, to eat it. Sometimes the power is too great. It consumes.’
Danlo took Soli’s hand; even though he himself was cold and half-naked, with only a shagshay skin draped loosely across his shoulders, Soli’s hand felt colder still. ‘What can I do? Is there no cure? Should I make some blood-tea to give you strength?’
‘No, that would not help.’
‘Does it hurt? Oh, sir, what can I do?’
‘I … believe,’ Soli said, ‘I believe that Haidar knew of a cure, but he has gone over, hasn’t he? All the men – the women, too.’
Danlo blinked away the pain in his eyes, and he found that he could see things very clearly. And on Soli’s face, in his tired, anguished eyes, there was only death. Soli would go over soon, he knew, there could be no help for that. It was shaida for a man to die too soon, but Soli’s death would not be shaida because it was clear that he was dying at the right time.
‘Sir,’ he said, ‘ti-alasharia, you too, why, why?’
‘Yes,’ Soli said. And then he stretched out his hand and pointed upwards. ‘The stars, you must be told about the stars.’
Danlo