Black Mesa looked down into Snow Mountain’s worried face. “He saw his father,” he answered.
Snow Mountain’s taut expression slackened. “H-his real father?”
“Yes. His body was mumbling, telling what his soul saw as it passed through the worlds. He called the man ‘father,’ but I don’t know if he truly realizes the man’s identity in this world.”
“He can’t know, Black Mesa. I never told him anything! He has asked many times, but—”
“Snow Mountain,” Black Mesa gently interrupted, “you must understand. Everything that leaves, returns. Everything that dies is reborn. Everything that is hidden is revealed. We humans live in an immense and naked universe, a universe we barely understand.”
Life “moved,” Black Mesa knew, as inconstant and fickle as Wind Baby, frolicking, sleeping, but never truly still, never solid, or finished. Seed and fruit, rain and drought, belief and reality, everything traveled in a gigantic circle, an eternal process of becoming something else.
Snow Mountain’s gaze focused on her son. Buckthorn had finished hollowing out his two-hands-tall section of cottonwood log and had begun constructing the “heart” of the drum. He stretched a piece of sinew through the middle, tied it off, and attached the turkey feather to the taut strand. Black Mesa nodded when the youth bent forward and growled into the drum in the deepest voice he could muster, to give the drum a rumbling bass voice.
Without taking her eyes from Buckthorn, Snow Mountain asked, “What else happened to him in the Soot World?”
“His father taught him a Song. They Sang it together. While they were Singing, the earth began to tremble, and then rivers of fire consumed the earth. To escape, Buckthorn climbed into the sky, using the clouds as stepping stones.”
“I don’t understand.”
Black Mesa shrugged. “The vision was not given to you.”
“Did Buckthorn understand?”
He watched Buckthorn place two pieces of deerhide over the top and bottom, then lace them together by pulling strips of rawhide through holes he had punched around the edges. “No,” Black Mesa said through a tired exhalation. “But he will. Someday.”
“You will teach him?”
“I cannot. I have promised Buckthorn that the holy Derelict will teach him.”
Snow Mountain’s lips parted as she lifted a hand to her heart. Her eyes seemed to enlarge. “Dune? But I thought Dune never wished to see him again? That’s what you told me!”
Black Mesa lowered his gaze, searching for the right words. “The Great Circle has shifted. There are many things Buckthorn must know. Perhaps even the identity of his real father.”
“Should I be the one—”
“No.” He reached out, placing a hand on her shoulder to emphasize his words. “There is great danger in this revelation. If he must know, Dune will tell him. It is, after all, Dune’s right to decide if and when he is told.”
Buckthorn tentatively beat his drum with his forefinger to test the resonance. Black Mesa glanced at him, a great weariness settling on his heart. A soft smile came to the youth’s face. He looked up eagerly to see if anyone else in the village had heard the beautiful tone. Black Mesa gave him an approving nod, and Buckthorn’s smile widened. He tapped the drum again. “You must trust me, Snow Mountain. Dune will teach Buckthorn.”
Snow Mountain seemed to be digesting this news. “And does this mean my son will be a great Singer?”
“I can say only that he will be needed.” He peered at Snow Mountain. “Which of us dares ask for more than that?”
Three
As the flames of sunset dwindled, the drifting clouds turned a somber gray, smudging the heavens like oily smoke. The shadows of the canyon lengthened until they blended with the night. Owls sailed over the sage, their calls echoing. The evening fires from fourteen large towns and over two hundred small villages gave the canyon an eerie glow and a pungent smell. The massive cliffs seemed to flutter and dance.
Ironwood, War Chief of Talon Town, paced back and forth within the confines of the rock shelter. A deep hollow in the sheer-walled sandstone cliff, the smooth buff-colored overhang rose barely a hand’s width above his head. On the rear wall, the carved images of the Spiral, Evening People, and various gods watched him. This rock shelter lay midway between Talon Town and Kettle Town. When Ironwood looked to the east, he could just see the hanging porch that ran high along Kettle Town’s second story. This late in winter, with the chill in the air, no one stood there.
A fragrant whisper of wind blew through the stubble of last summer’s cornfields, across the cold dirt, and flicked the hem of his red warrior’s shirt. Ironwood shivered. A muscular man, he had an oval face and flat nose. Unlike most of the Bear Clan, his eyebrows did not arch neatly over his eyes, but slanted upward as if with mischievous intent. He had lived forty-five summers, and gray had overpowered his once jet-black hair. He wore it in a single thick braid that fell to the middle of his back.