Then I got through the trees and gasped—because it was another city! A little bitty city, just a few buildings and they were empty, just a few streets and they were made of dirt, just two terraces and they grew wild, not planted or lived on at all. But it was a real city, because it was fierce and angry and it said who are you so I said who I was and then I asked who it was. It had a little bitty name, too: YUKUR. Arrebaia means “the city of the conquerors,” but Yukur is just “the men’s place.” Still, I told the city that Yukur was a very pretty name, because I wanted to be nice.
Yukur sort of huffed and told me I was not supposed to be there because I was not really a boy, but it was maybe OK because I was shaped like a lizard, and anyway I was a godling so it could not stop me. I could tell that it did not like me being there, though, so I made my lizard body into a boy lizard body, and promised I would only wear a boy body, or no body at all, while I was in the city’s limits. Then it was happy, and I was glad, because I had done the hello thing right again.
I skittered down a wall and up some steps and then jumped into some bushes when people went by: two boys, all aflutter in their pretty robes and long hair, rushing up the steps like they were late for something. I could hear one of them whisper to the other, “It’s Eino tonight!” I didn’t know what that meant.
(I know you know, but I am telling the story! Shut up! Interrupting is rude.)
The other boy giggled and then they both were gone up the steps. I followed them but it was slow because I was only a little lizard. I decided to be human instead, but since I had said I would be a boy, I made a boy body. Every boy I had seen since coming to the mortal realm—except Ia, but he was weird—wore heavy drapey robes and long hair, so I made myself like that, too, and ran after the two I had seen. It is hard to run when you are covered from neck to toe in robes, though, and when your hair is four feet long, and also when you have stuff between your legs that dangles and flops around! I did not like any of it, but I had made a promise. Eventually I figured out that I had to hold my head really high and gather up my robes, and run in this weird very straight way or I would hurt the dangly bits—but if I did all this, I could run like those other boys.
And I wanted to run! There was another sound over the beats that had drawn me to Yukur: deep and rough and rhythmic mortal voices. I did not know what it was, but it made me bouncy; I wanted to make the sounds, too, and move with the beats. I could have just dissipated and gone to see as a godling, but this was a mortal thing, all body-stuff, pounding blood and tingly skin and heavy breath. I needed mortalness to know what it all meant.
Finally I got to the top of the terrace. And! I saw!
Fires and smoke! And lots of boys all gathered in a circle! Some of them were to the side of the group, hitting things made of wood and leather which is what made the beaty noise—drums; Itempas had told me all about them. The rest of the boys were trotting about for a better position in the circle, or already in the circle, moving all together and making sounds in time with the beats, some high and some low and all of it together beautiful. Exciting! So this was MUSIC! It is not like the music in the gods’ realm, which is why I did not recognize it at first. Only two beats overlapping, no harmonies or clicks or static or interweaving thoughts, and the beats were not even as fast as pulsar-beats. The boys’ singing was not especially interesting, either, just words chanted over and over, a couple of tones harmonizing. It was catchy, though, and I liked it even if it was very simple. I moved forward a few feet behind the boys I had seen before, who were still whispering as they edged into the circle of other boys. Most of the boys around us were bigger, older, with heavy jaws and deep voices and big shoulders beneath their robes. They moved aside as us younger ones came through, though, grinning down at us in welcome, and I could not help smiling shyly back. One of the big boys patted me on the back. “It’s all right,” he said. “You don’t have to, if you don’t want to. Just do what feels right.”
“OK,” I said, not really knowing what else to say. It must have been right, because the big one pushed me forward, closer to the circle’s center, so I could see.
And then it was WOW I had never seen COOL I really liked WHEE there was stuff going SWISH and legs going KICK and IT WAS AMAZING.
What? Oh, fine, I will say it better. OK. The boys in the circle were fighting.
It did not look like fighting, not at first, because everything was swirling robes and looping rivers of hair. It looked like dancing, or what Papa Tempa had said dancing looked like. It was harder than dancing, though, faster, and the feel of it was not about the music. The boys rode the music, but they were focused on each other, and everything in them was all fierce! And wanting to win! One boy’s foot came out from a swirl of robe and swept the other’s ankle and that one fell back but caught himself to turn the fall into a flip. He swirled away, always swirling, everything a circle. Suddenly I understood: it was supposed to look like a dance, even if it was really a fight!